elfs | Brains among the Ruins of a Once Great Nation (Reply)

There is just a ton of really ugly crap in the news today, so let's start with something that makes me happy:

I mean, we kinda knew it was there, but to actually see it is way too cool.

Our President and his advisors believe three things which are wrong individually, but disastrous when combined. These are:
The President can do whatever he wants during wartime, whether or not it violates the laws.
It is always wartime, and the battlefield is everywhere, both at home and abroad.
The President has the right to keep what he is doing completely secret. No one -- not citizens, not Congress, not anyone -- has the right to force him to reveal what he and others in the Executive are doing.

And Congress is aiding and abetting him with this FISA crap.

Greenwald goes postal on Congress!

And no wonder. Those bastards are aiding and abetting the continued destruction of our once honored Constitution. We truly have become a nation under the rule of men, not laws. Say goodbye to your beloved republic:

"ll the Attorney General has to do is recite those magic words -- the President requested this eavesdropping and did it in order to save us from the Terrorists -- and the minute he utters those words, the courts are required to dismiss the lawsuits against the telecoms, no matter how illegal their behavior was.

"I refuse to be lectured on national security by people who are responsible for the most disastrous set of foreign policy decisions in the recent history of the United States."

What he said.

Niccolo Obama

I just kept Sullivan's headline because it is far, far too perfect.

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He's the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he's too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

If you're gonna hold a press conference to claim you had cocaine-fueled gay sex with Obama...

Larry Sinclair has been going around claiming exactly that. And, it turns out, the man active arrest warrants, so when he scheduled a press conference, two US Marshalls knew exactly where to find him. I wonder if either one looked like Tommy Lee Jones.

2 cents. 7 years.

The Wall Street Journal points out that it will be seven years before the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve's oil resources could be brought on-line, and even if they were, the total price difference they'd make at the pump averages two cents per gallon over the next 25 years, according to Bush's own Energy Policy office. I'd save $8 a year. Gosh, a dinner at McDonalds, in exchange for ruining a pristine wildlife refuge. Thanks, John McCain!

Five reasons to love $4 gas

The mass transit boom
Lower obesity rates
Fewer accidents
Shorter commutes
The biofuels craze

I think the last one's crap, by the way. It's still an inefficent way of using solar power to turn inert matter into the chemical storage of energy.

The Neocons attempt to rewrite history

Doug Feith fires the first salvo in an attempt to show that he, Rumsfield, and Wolfowitz were not out of control, and that they and George W. Bush deserve to be remembered as heroes, not villains.

Feith will be remembered as the guy who wanted to bomb Paraguay after 9/11 to prove to the terroists the US will strike anywhere to demonstrate our nation's will and supremacy. This is probably why General Franks referred to him as "the most stupid fucking man in the world."

"We didn't go to war because we wanted to bring democracy to the Iraqi people."

Just so we're clear on that. From National Review, no less!

Ackerman: Pentagon saves one girl. Ruins the lives of 5,000,000 others.

I think Spencer has every right to be needin' the Maalox right about now.

16-year-old boy from faith healing family dies.

He died from a urinary tract infection that went untreated so long the urea in his bloodstream poisoned him.

Answers In Genesis's Ken Ham leads prayer breakfast at Pentagon

Stuff like this depresses me. Ken Ham? The man who doesn't believe in chemistry or biology, is leading a prayer with the people with guns. Big guns. Fuck.

John Scalzi on the perfect frame for the California Marriage Protection Act.

"Are there legally married same-sex couples in California? If so, will the California Marriage Protection Act destroy those marriages?" The answer to both questions is "yes." Therefore, the proponents of this amendment have declared: we must destroy some marriages in order to save others.