When measured meets insane

This is what you get when a left-leaning blogger attempts something resembling a measured argument about George W. Bush...in this case, Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum.

LOL at the insanity. I especially loved the letter-writer:

I am appalled. Does Washington Monthly as a magazine support this errant, inaccurate, and uncaring opinion?

I daresay that those unfortunate souls who have been secretly, illegally, and unconstituionally renditioned in unmarked white CIA planes to other countries to be tortured for months -- without recourse to counsel, legal proceedings, or habeas corpus protections -- would be the first to say that Bush's crimes are worse than Bush's. And would they be wrong?

Well -- would they? I'm asking you to defend Kevin's assertion. And if you don't support it, to apologize to your readership. Whether on Kevin's behalf, or not, I don't care -- I'm talking to you. I'm making an ethics and morality check on YOU, the editors.

Yeah, I'm mad. This is how the country slides further and further down the slippery slope to authoritarianism and despotism, when the opinion leaders can't be bothered to call a war criminal a war criminal and a destroyer of the Constitution exactly what he is.

I await your response, and I expect to hear personally from one of you.

Regards,

Rob Conrad
Chicago, IL

The most obvious point (So obvious that it's one of those things you feel guilty pointing out but only for a moment) is of course his confusion of Bush's crimes with those of...Bush; apparently he's so angry he forgot who he was writing about.

Rob needs a big dose of Get Over Yourself...demanding answers from the magazine editors for Kevin's audaciousness. 'Cause after all, he's mad!

I'm no fan of most of Kevin Drum's work as anyone who looks around will notice. But he has all the sympathy in the world on this one.

Kevin's no fan of the President but undertook, as best I can tell, an honest appraisal of the difference, as he sees it, between President Nixon and Bush the younger. And what does he get for his trouble?

The lefty venom that so usually pervades his regular readership turned back onto the unsuspecting author, that's what. I guess though when you've been feeding the bears for years you shouldn't be surprised when one of them takes a bite out of you.

While we're on the subject of Oil

And oil prices...

Buy, buy, buy and drill, drill, drill!:

It’s unfortunate the administration doesn’t seem ready to back this strong rhetoric with some old-fashioned intervention. The Treasury has the authority to buy dollars and sell euros in the open market. Better yet, it can coordinate these efforts with Jean Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank. President Bush and Treasury man Paulson also are forgetting the key word: “appreciate.” As in appreciate the dollar. That would be a head turner on Wall Street and on global foreign-exchange markets.

Meanwhile the ECB is raising interest rates which will appreciate the currency against the dollar, and you guessed it, more likely than not boost the price of oil.

Is anybody in D.C. paying attention...?

Why Democrats are wrong...

...when they tell you starting to explore and/or drill for new oil won't affect the price:

Now here is the good news. Any policy that causes the expected future oil price to fall can cause the current price to fall, or to rise less than it would otherwise do. In other words, it is possible to bring down today's price of oil with policies that will have their physical impact on oil demand or supply only in the future.

For example, increases in government subsidies to develop technology that will make future cars more efficient, or tighter standards that gradually improve the gas mileage of the stock of cars, would lower the future demand for oil and therefore the price of oil today.

Similarly, increasing the expected future supply of oil would also reduce today's price. That fall in the current price would induce an immediate rise in oil consumption that would be matched by an increase in supply from the OPEC producers and others with some current excess capacity or available inventories.

Any steps that can be taken now to increase the future supply of oil, or reduce the future demand for oil in the U.S. or elsewhere, can therefore lead both to lower prices and increased consumption today.

But I leave it to you...you can believe the former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan or Chuck Schumer.

When a Cartoonist goes Wrong

What happens when a cartoonist goes off the rails? They look dumb. Really dumb:

What's most striking about Heller is that absolutely everybody -- majority and dissents -- says the Second Amendment protects an individual right.

It's true that the dissenters' view of that right is somewhere between "minimalist" (to be charitable) and "incoherent" (to be accurate). But nonetheless, all nine Justices specifically said the right is individual, and thus rejected the "collective right" position on the Second Amendment, a position that's been the mainstay of gun-control groups, newspaper editorialists, and lower federal courts for decades, and one that was presented by those adherents as so obviously correct that those arguing for an individual right were called "frauds" and shills for the NRA.

Yet the collective right theory could not command a single vote on the Court when actually tested.

Here at the end of all things

We ran this bit of ridiculousness from the AP on the front page (yes, above the fold). How I managed to summon the strength to get on with my day after reading it I still am unsure.

Others better and stronger than I have taken turns ripping it to shreds and rightfully so. James Pethokoukis sheds light on the bad math and Lileks--as only he can do--dismantles everything else.

Question of the Day

Anybody at work paying attention?

"I don't know jack..."

From the Washington Times' report on Scott McClellan's waste of Congressional time, a.k.a. his House testimony on Friday morning:

Under questioning from Democrats he was unable to name anyone who specifically engaged in deception in the run-up to the Iraq war, instead blaming the style of Washington politics for the problems.

He got paid how much to write a book...?

P.S. I think Politco's John Bresnahan is onto something:

The problem: He doesn’t know the whole truth himself.

P.P.S. Saving the best for last, Joe & Val pledge to fight on:

Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson released the following statement following former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee today:

“Scott McClellan’s book and his congressional testimony shed some light on — as we alleged in our lawsuit — the decision by senior government officials to betray the identity of a covert CIA officer, Valerie Plame Wilson. Many questions, however, such as the role of Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney remain unanswered. Our civil suit, now before the Court of Appeals, is designed to permit us to uncover the truth, to hold to account those who would use their public positions to engage in private political vendettas, and to ensure that future generations of public servants do not engage in such despicable behavior against fellow Americans.

Mr. McClellan’s testimony today underscores why we need to continue to pursue our rights under the American judicial system, and why Congress should also fully investigate the circumstances of the leak, and the subsequent obstruction of justice which is ongoing.”

It's not even funny anymore how absurd this is...

Apologize already...

John Murtha owes a bunch of Marines an apology...this is me holding my breath waiting for that press conference.

Embarrassing

It's been over since last Thursday though it only finally ended tonight. No proof of life at all in the second half and that's just embarrassing.

Will anyone notice that the Guru is 3-8 in his last two trips to the Finals?

Devoid of Common Sense

Oh, but for some common sense from the courts...

Instead, we get things like this:

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected for the third time President Bush's policy of holding foreign prisoners under exclusive control of the military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling that the men have a right to seek their freedom before a federal judge.

The justices said the Constitution from the beginning enshrined the "privilege of habeas corpus" -- or the right to go before a judge -- as one of the safeguards of liberty. And that right extends even to foreigners captured in the war on terrorism, the high court said, particularly when they have been held for as long as six years without charges.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court majority: "The detainees in these cases are entitled to a prompt habeas corpus hearing. . . . Within the Constitution's separation-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear challenges to the authority of the executive to imprison a person."

U-N-B-E-L-I-E-V-A-B-L-E

The Supreme court earlier this week granted the rights, nay the single-most important constitutional right we have as US citizens, to enemies of the country and foreigners acting as unlawful enemy combatants.

I am not a lawyer, I don't pretend to know or understand the legal concepts here. But I do recognize the absence of common sense when I see it.

Conservative reactions to this ridiculousness:

Start with the minority dissent:

America is at war with radical Islamists. The enemy began by killing Americans and American allies abroad: 241 at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, 19 at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, 224 at our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and 17 on the USS Cole in Yemen. See National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 60–61, 70, 190 (2004). On September 11, 2001, the enemy brought the battle to American soil, killing 2,749 at the Twin Towers in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon in Washington, D. C., and 40 in Pennsylvania. See id., at 552, n. 9. It has threatened further attacks against our homeland; one need only walk about buttressed and barricaded Washington, or board a plane anywhere in the country, to know that the threat is a serious one. Our Armed Forces are now in the field against the enemy, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last week, 13 of our countrymen in arms were killed.

The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.-- Justice Scalia


So who has won? Not the detainees. The Court’s analysis leaves them with only the prospect of further litigation to determine the content of their new habeas right, followed by further litigation to resolve their particular cases, followed by further litigation before the D. C. Circuit— where they could have started had they invoked the DTA procedure.

Not Congress, whose attempt to “determine—through democratic means—how best” to balance the security of the American people with the detainees’ liberty interests, see Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U. S. 557, 636 (2006) (BREYER, J., concurring), has been unceremoniously
brushed aside. Not the Great Writ, whose majesty is hardly enhanced by its extension to a jurisdictionally quirky outpost, with no tangible benefit to anyone. Not the rule of law, unless by that is meant the rule of lawyers, who will now arguably have a greater role than military
and intelligence officials in shaping policy for alien enemy combatants. And certainly not the American people, who today lose a bit more control over the conduct of this Nation’s
foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges.

I respectfully dissent.

Mark Levin: And what was once considered inconceivable is now compelled by the Constitution, or so five justices have ruled. I fear for my country. I really do. And AP, among others, reports this story as a defeat for "the Bush administration." Really? I see it as a defeat for the nation.

Stick a fork in 'em

The series is over. Good teams don't lose games at home after leading by 24 points...

What she really meant to say...

What Nancy Pelosi said today about gas prices in America:

"We cannot drill our way out of this," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California countered. Opening the wildlife refuge in Alaska would reduce U.S. gasoline prices by one penny per gallon, she said. She and other Democrats blame President George W. Bush's energy policies for the gasoline price spike.

"A barrel of oil now costs four times more than it did when President Bush took office," Pelosi said. "Two oil men in the White House, cost of oil four times higher. Price at the pump: $4 a gallon."

I'm sure she didn't mean it. I mean, how could somebody of her stature be that stupid? Well, judging by this, it's not real hard:

She said oil companies already lease about 68 million acres of land that is not being drilled. She questioned why oil companies were pushing to open up the ANWR in Alaska when so many acres they currently hold are not being developed.

On that point, a group of Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation that would compel oil companies to drill in lands they are now leasing from the federal government.

"Oil corporations are trying to take control of as much land now during the oil-friendly Bush administration years, but are holding off on drilling until the price of oil soars to $200 or $300 a barrel so they can make even greater profits," said Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a New York Democrat and a sponsor of the drilling bill.

The bill would force oil companies to pay fees for leased lands that go unused. The fees would increase over time. Republicans argue current law already requires oil companies to "use or lose" the lands they lease.

I'm sure what she meant to say was that we can't conserve our way out of this, given the large increase in Global demand coming from China and India in the last few years. I mean, after all, members of Congress can't possibly be that stupid...

Thanks for the Help!

To get the full gist on what exactly this is and where it comes from check this post at Powerline.

To otherwise enjoy the direct and powerfully humurous contrast between the parties simply requires 10 seconds of your time to enlarge and read.

Kinda speaks for itself...

Stupid Congressional Act of the Day

A new feature? Maybe...Lord knows we don't hurt for entries.

At least on this day though it's a one-time deal, courtesy of everybody's favorite Congressional loon:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic presidential contender, said Monday he wants the House to consider a resolution to impeach President Bush.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi consistently has said impeachment was "off the table."
Kucinich, D-Ohio, read his proposed impeachment language in a floor speech. He contended Bush deceived the nation and violated his oath of office in leading the country into the Iraq war.

Be Less Informed

Jimmy Margulies putting his ignorance of life in the real world on display for all...

Clownshow

Bush is a Traitor

And Clint's a hack...

Job Security

It's all about being the irreplaceable one...

The Height of Economic Illiteracy

Stop the war, fix the economy:

Forty-eight percent said a pullout would help fix the country’s economic problems “a great deal,” and an additional 20 percent said it would help at least somewhat. Some 43 percent said increasing government spending on health care, education and housing programs would help a great deal; 36 percent said cutting taxes.

“Let’s stop paying for this war,” said Hilda Sanchez, 44, of Waterford, Calif. “There are a lot of people who are struggling. We can use the money to pay for medical care and help people who were put out of their homes.”

The subject of leaving Iraq shows a sharp partisan divide — 65 percent of Democrats think it would help the economy a lot, but only 18 percent of Republicans think so.

Oy...

God is Great

God is good...

There was a palpable expectation of history here on chilly night in the Arizona desert. Super Bowl XLII delivered on that score, but history of a different sort was made Sunday.

The Giants, 12-point underdogs, ruined the New England Patriots' quest for a perfect season. New York, which lost six of 16 games during the regular season, prevailed 17-14 at University of Phoenix Stadium.

18-1 is great...unless the 1 is the last game of the season.

I've been saying for weeks that the Pats were due; all the tough games in the playoffs and at the end of the regular season and finding ways to win even on an off night...it couldn't last forever. And it didn't.