More Republican Hijinx....or, Ode to a Lost Constitution

Just when you think that there must be something they won't do...some level they won't stoop to...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17453555/

Turns out Pete Domenici, Republican Senator from New Mexico, may have called a U.S. Attorney in his home state to pressure him to issue indictments against Democrats implicated in a kickback investigation before the mid-term congressional elections last fall. The prosecutor, David Iglesias, was later fired, he says (with some evidence), because he resisted the pressure by Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, another NM Republican to rush the indictments. Iglesias is one of eight U.S. Attorneys fired in December, some without cause, all under similar circumstances.

There are so many things wrong with this... first off, it is a violation of Congressional ethics for a member of congress to communicate with federal prosecutors about ongoing criminal investigations. But even if Domenici and Wilson skate by on ethics, this kind of behavior smacks of the Gestapo. The Gestapo, during its tenure, operated without any restrictions by civil authority, meaning that its members could not be tried for any of their police practices. This unconditional authority added an elitist element to the Gestapo; its members knew that whatever actions they took, no consequences would arise. Sound familiar...?

At least we hung the Nazis...will we actually let these criminals retire with pensions funded by our taxes, earned with our sweat and labor?

Ann, you ignorant slut...

If there's anybody left who wonders whether there's actually any conservatism or morality (or decency) left in the conservative wing of the Republican party, well, apparently you've been sleeping in a cave... At a meeting of CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference), following an address by Mitt Romney (and they said Bill Clinton was slick!), Ann Coulter, perhaps the most vile creature since Adolph Hitler, said

"I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I -- so kind of an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards."

(Romney, by the way, distanced himself almost immediately from her remark -- he could scarcely do anything else -- yet, revealingly, refused to go the extra mile...to do the only decent thing that a decent human being would do...and distance himself from her...)

Wow...here's a guy (Edwards) who came from the working class, has spent the last four years, out of the limelight, meeting and talking with ordinary folks about their lives, what they want from their government, what they need, perhaps the most decent human being in politics, regardless what you think of his views. And oh, by the way, devoted husband to a wife who has fought and overcome breast cancer. Faggot? Ann, you are such an asshole. "Faggot" is a slur against gay men, Ann. Sort of like "dike," you know, kinda like you, Ann? You know he's not gay...and even if he were, rabidly, flamingly, homosexual, what's the point of calling him a faggot? Do you think, somehow, that that's cool? That it appeals to conservatives? Are you that stupid, Greenwich Girl, or does an Ivy League pedigree these days qualify you to be nothing more than a boil on society's ass?

Shortly after the faggot remark, when responding to questions, Coulter said that "Romney is the best candidate we have." She said Rudy Giuliani is too liberal -- "when both candidates for president support abortion I think we can hang it up as a country." After dumping on McCain, and saluting Gingrich as a brilliant guy who's time has passed she embraced Romney: "He tricked liberals into voting for him. I like a guy who hoodwinks the voters so easily."

(http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/48765/)

Ah, this I like even better...endorsing deception of the people by the people's elected representatives...what hole did this thing crawl out of??

Actually, Ann Coulter is the walking, breathing, living exemplar of the case for working ceaselessly to preserve abortion rights in our country. Her mother would have done society a great service by aborting her...

Look, one of the great things about our country is that you can say anything, and your right to do so is enshrined in our Constitution. However vile and below contempt I may find this creature, I defend her right to spew such trash. But, because you can do a thing is not always reason to actually do it. This kind of garbage does not elevate the political discourse in our country. In fact, it reduces us to the level of animals...appealing to the basest of base instincts, our fear and hatred of that which we do not understand, that which threatens our complacency, our narrowly defined and defended view of how things ought to be. What's ironic, and in a twisted way, kinda funny, is that the most notable "faggots" of recent news have come from the same sewer as Ann (Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, Ken Mehlman?)...

Ann, and others like her, speak, act, and live without a conscience, without that internal system of checks and balances that makes one think about the effect and consequences of one's actions...either she does not consider them, or she doesn't give a damn...in either case, she is a vile creature. For certain, she lives in good company...other notable people in history who spoke and acted without conscience include Hitler, Stalin, Mao, GeeDubya... One day, Ann will get her comeuppance. I can't wait. The base instincts which she arouses in me leave me anticipating the day with great enthusiasm...

Musings on life outside the United States...

I've been extremely fortunate, in that the career I've chosen has enabled me to travel broadly. I've been all over Europe, over much of Asia, Latin America, and most of the lower forty-eight states.

I'm increasingly struck by the extent to which we Americans have isolated ourselves from the rest of the world. By that, I mean we know very little about the rest of the world, very little about what's going on in the rest of the world, and the saddest part of all, we don't really seem to want to know about anything east of the Atlantic, or west of the Pacific, and even those things which happen north or south of the border are viewed through a very xenophobic lens.

As I write, I'm sitting in my hotel room in the UK, Berkshire, about 40 miles west of London. On television, I'm watching CNN. Yes, CNN. I've found that it's available in most of the countries to which I've traveled, but, apart from the logo in the upper left corner of the screen, most Americans who've never traveled outside the US might not recognize it. Right now, World News is on...and they're covering, truly, stories from around the world... A sampling:

• Tornadoes in Alabama
• Bus crash in Atlanta
• Incest case in Germany
• Anna Nicole Smith's funeral
• The trend of young Indians, educated abroad, returning to India
• Riots in Copenhagen
• Six Sunnis assasinated in Iraq
• Iran's president visiting Saudi Arabia ahead of a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan
• UK sending a team to Ethiopia to find missing tourists
• World weather (North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia)
• Roger Federer wins in Dubai
• Scandal at Walter Reed
• etc...

Some of the regular programs which appear on CNN:

• Inside Africa
• Inside the Middle East
• Inside Asia
• World Sport (which truly covers the world...feature story today on the debut of Daisuke Matsuzaka with the Boston Red Sox, and the Tennis Channel Open in Las Vegas, the Qatar Total Open, among others)
• etc.

So, who cares? Well, we should...this is CNN, not the BBC, not Al Jazeera. It's an American network, headquartered in Atlanta, and yet the CNN programming I can watch in the US represents only a small subset of the outstanding, worldwide programming that is being produced by them. Why don't they show this stuff at home? Likely, because there's no demand for it by Americans. I realize that this is a sweeping generalization, but in my experience, people outside the US are much more knowlegeable about world events, including those happening in the US, than we are, and in some cases, they seem to understand more about what's happening inside the US than we do...

I've just finished reading Bushwhacked by the late Molly Ivins, and her co-author, Lou Dubose. Ms. Ivins, for those not familiar with her, was a down home, Texas journalist who had a particular knack for political commentary. She was, to be certain, a liberal, a populist, and a Democrat. In Bushwhacked, published in 2003, Ivins and Dubose chronicle the misadventures of GeeDubya and his administration. It is an account of a tenure that I am confident will be viewed by history as the single most incompetent, destructive (of civil liberties, human rights, the US Constitution, the separation of church and state, some sense of balance between the social strata in the US ... I could go on and on), and downright criminal administrations in the history of the United States. Period. I'm fairly well-read, and yet I learned things in this book that I was completely unaware of, things which the US press has simply not covered...

There's a saying in the US (I think it's just the US) that we get the leadership we deserve...we'd best wake up, and soon. We are no longer viewed in the world as a benevolent superpower, or for that matter, a superpower at all...I fear for the world my children are growing up in...

Musings on recent happenings...

I haven't blogged in a while... too many things going on, and nothing terribly interesting to say, I guess... but I've been away long enough...

Anna Nicole Smith... sweet Lord... a Florida appeals court has finally lifted the stay (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17379805/) that was preventing the guarian ad litem for her daughter from burying her, finally, next to her son, in the Bahamas. With all the silliness that has ensued since her death (not unlike a lot of the silliness that surrounded her life), the thing that struck me is how little everybody -- except, interestingly, Howard K. Stern -- seemed to care about her wishes, what was best for her daughter, and so on. Her mother was especially galling, from my perspective. A true mother would not question, for a New York minute, her daughter's desire to be buried beside her son, in the place where she had chosen to make a new life... In fact, this whole circus has been about garnering advantage, and, ultimately, access to her estate...what a sad, sad state of affairs, and what absolutely shameful behavior by her mother!

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. ... I suspect that most of the folks who have been so thoroughly absorbed in the Anna Nicole story don't even know who Schlesinger is (was) (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17392935/?s). He was a Camelot insider...one of the mythic people who were part of a mythic time in American history, and he was one of its most learned chroniclers. It amazes me, always, how little appetite we have in this country for history, ours or anybody else's, so it's no great surprise that Schlesinger was not more of a rock star, outside of a certain group...

Iraq... more and more Americans are dying, and yet Bush and Cheney continue doggedly down the same path, doing the same things that have proven over and over again to not work... all this while nearly 90% of National Guard units don't have the equipment they need (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17390852/), the Taliban are re-emergent in Afghanistan (you know, the place where Osama bin Laden is still at large, where the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 are holed up... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10624157), and those brave young boys and girls who are leaving arms and legs and the innocence of their youth behind forever are being rewarded by a grateful government with decrepit accomodations shared with rats while they recover their physical and mental faculties (and, as usual for this administration, a scapegoat's been identified and fired, as though he was single-handedly responsible... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10624157).

Why do I increasingly get the feeling that we're living in the latter days of a modern Roman empire?

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely!

The continuously expanding scandal regarding ex-Congressman Tom Foley's salacious emails and instant messages to male Congressional pages is really a study in so many base human behaviors. It's becoming increasingly apparent that lots of Republicans on the Hill knew about Foley's behavior as early as (latest news) 2000, but instead of immediately acting to protect the pages, they did things that appear to have been more calculated to make a quiet attempt to stop the behavior, but ensure that the fact that the behavior occurred at all never saw the light of day. Confronted about it, I've heard talking head after talking head comparing what Foley did to what Bill Clinton did or Barney Frank did. While neither is particularly a paragon of moral virtue, the following things are true about Foley, which are categorically not true about Clinton or Frank.

• Foley sent lewd emails and instant messages to 16-year olds. Monica Lewinsky was 21 when she went to work at the White House. In this country, 21 is the age at which you are considered to fully be an adult, NOT A CHILD! You can vote, drink, and have every other individual right and freedom which this society provides, which you cannot at 16! Barney Frank consorted with a male prostitute, who ran a prostitution ring out of Frank's basement. This man also was NOT A CHILD! And prostitution, whatever we may otherwise think about it, is the world's oldest profession (or is it politics?). Neither of these men was taking advantage of children!!
• Foley, it turns out, may have had sex with an underage page. Neither Clinton nor Frank had sex with anybody under age.

And, not once in this entire discussion have I heard a single Republican say, unequivocally, as the very first thing out of their mouths, "our obligation, first, foremost, and always is to protect our children, and we will not rest until everyone accountable has been discovered and appropriately punished". Hastert says, "As was once said in this town, the buck stops here" and then went on to weasel his way out of any responsibility or accountability for anything having to do with the entire matter, except for saying he's responsible. Saying and being ain't the same thing, Mr. Speaker! And oh, by the way, the person behind "as was once said in this town" was Harry S. Truman, asshole, a Democrat! "Give 'em hell" Harry would've been to the bottom of this one already, and heads would have rolled, already. I understand your not wanting to be identified with one of the most decent men, Democrat, Republican, or Whig ever to hold the highest office in the land, because you're frankly not fit to shine his shoes...