Category: Edgewise

  • Shooting Indians in a Barrel: The Trust Scandal

    It’s nearly as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Gale Norton’s Department of the Interior is so far winning the Bush Administration’s fight against the Indians. A ten-year-old struggle to right 118 years of wrongs against American Indians is at an impasse with the Bush government holding most of the trump cards. The fight,…

  • “Drop a dime, and we’ll bust a cap.”

    AP today: As Democratic lawmakers argued for more details, CIA Director Porter Goss lamented the leak of classified information on a variety of ongoing intelligence operations. “I’m sorry to tell you that the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission,” Goss said. “It is my aim, and it is…

  • Last Minute Request

    Reuters tells us that the Supreme Court refused last night “to let Missouri execute a death-row inmate contesting lethal injection…turning down Missouri’s last-minute request to allow a midnight execution.” That’s right, the “last minute request” was from the state. They were irreparably deprived of their last opportunity to kill this man yesterday at midnight. I…

  • Killing Me Softly

    “…based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute– I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program…” –G.W.B. 2006

  • Play the SoTU drinking game

    Catch presents The State of the Union Drinking (& Other Stuff) Game: 1. Every time Bush says “freedom”: Take one very small sip of Wild Turkey (he said it 21 times during last year’s SOTU) 2. Every time Bush mentions Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Scooter Libby or Tom DeLay: Drink three bottles of Wild Turkey…

  • Abramoff vs The Tribes

    San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders sounded like Rep. Richard Pombo’s big sister taking on the corner bullies in her Sunday rant, “Lay off Pombo” in which she lit into “the left”, Nancy Pelosi, and Democratic party leaders for picking on Pombo for getting money from the tainted former lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, and his…

  • Reconstruction: Iraq vs Louisiana

    The Bush administration has doled out a lot of cash for the “reconstruction” of Iraq and we now have a report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The long story short is that $25 billion was appropriated by Congress to rebuild Iraq, including for 136 projects to improve water and sanitation and 425…

  • What do you do…

    …when a political party that is pledged to your destruction wins on election day? I don’t mean folks who you suspect would get a kick out of your destruction — like, maybe, if you were destroyed they’d exchange a high-five on the side. But a group that’s been actively putting out the positive spin on…

  • Bush & Johnson: In the Mirror of War

    Many have made comparisons between the Iraq war and the Vietnam war but I have been thinking lately about the characters and careers of the two men who waged those American–made wars: GWB and LBJ. Both were Texans, one a senator, the other governor, before entering the White House. They came from opposite sides of…

  • Love the man, part two

    Democrats.com says Karl Rove Has Zero Cred on National Security and quotes my favorite straight shooter, Howard Dean: > Karl Rove only has a White House job and a security clearance because President Bush has refused to keep his promise to fire anyone involved in revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative. Rove’s political…

  • Karl Rove to Mitt Romney: “Al Qaeda calling. Just kidding!”

    Mitt Romney is running for president but he doesn’t want my vote. Here’s what he said to New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney recently from Iowa where he is campaignin…er visiting. “The eavesdropping is a big matter on the coasts for people who are inclined to dislike the president,” Mr. Romney said.” The Coasts, people.…

  • New York Times Hides Cheney Spy

    Hid him in plain sight, I might add, on the back page of the Saturday national edition. And here’s the bland headline to David Johnston’s inscrutable article on Paul Wolfowitz’s former minion in the Department of Defense’s “Office of Special Plans” who has just been sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison (and…

  • Whose Eyebrows?

    Drudge is linking to a story on wcbstv.com and echoing their subhead, which reads: “Clinton’s Use Of Word ‘Plantation’ Raises Eyebrows.” I don’t know about you (I mean, really, I don’t) but when I read that headline over on Drudge I thought, ‘Holy cow, Hillary went and said something racially insenitive on MLK Day. What…

  • Elections–A Luxury in Wartime?

    In peacetime, it is vitally important to our American democracy that we adhere to the legally scheduled election-cycles in choosing and changing our high public officials. This allows candidates and parties who are not currently in power to challenge and, if they prevail, to replace those presently in office. In wartime, however, when the very…

  • It’s OK. Love the man.

    If you’re a Democrat, whatever your feelings about Howard Dean, it’s hard to watch this sequence and not, at least momentarily, love the man. Go on. Watch this video. I double-Democrat-dare you not to love him.

  • Gore won in 2000

    I know I’m supposed to be “over it” by now, but dammitall, I’m not. Lance deHaven-Smith, who wrote The Battle for Florida (University Press of Florida, 2005, explains it thusly: > It’s an embarrassing outcome for George Bush because it showed that Gore had gotten more votes. Everybody had thought that the chads were where…

  • Lawless presidents

    Since when do we have a system of Government where the President can simply “waive” away laws? That’s from Glenn Greenwald in a well-considered and comprehensive commentary, “An Ideology of Lawlessness” at digby’s blogspot. Take a read and educate yerself. I have to comment myself, however, on lawless precedents of American presidents since this ain’t…

  • Resumption of feud narrowly averted

    Like most people I was following the tragic Sago mine disaster. I couldn’t help noticing that the CEO of International Coal Group, the owner of the mine, was a fellow named Ben Hatfield. Hatfield? I thought to myself. As in the Hatfields and the McCoys? Radio reports about the lone survivor of the disaster caused…

  • Bush signed anti-torture statute with fingers crossed

    >”When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.” > >”The question is, ” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” >”The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty. “which is to be master–that’s all.” Lewis…

  • Abramoff & DeLay: “free-market ” friends

    Just cleaning out my files….here’s an excerpt from Thomas B. Edsall’s piece in the Washington Post from 2004: In 1995, Abramoff took on another major client, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American protectorate in the Pacific. Again, he capitalized on his ability to exploit conservative ideology. The Marianas sought to retain exemptions…

  • Habeas Corpus Suspended in the District of Columbia

    A single paragraph in Harper’s Weekly on November 9, 1861 said this: On 23d the President instructed the Marshal for the District of Columbia not to serve writs on the Provost Marshal, but return them to the Court with the explanation that the President has, for the present, suspended the privilege of the writ of…