Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.
Stranger: Indeed?
Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
Stranger: I wear no mask.
Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

The King in Yellow (Act II, Scene ii)

Regnat non regitur qui nihil nisi quod vult facit

St. Sebastian's Day
Pistachio House, Tacoma

My Dear Friends,

For eight years now, I have been constantly reminded, nearly every day, of the words that New York Boss Mark Hannah reportedly uttered of Theodore Roosevelt, "I can't believe that goddam cowboy is President of the United States". Indeed.

Today, the cowboy ambles home to Texas. Praise God.

I'm staying home today, with millions around the country and the world, to watch this moment. Of course, I've been watching Presidential inaugurals since 1977, so that's not particularly new.

However, (and however you feel about Mr Obama's politics) this is an amazing moment in the history of my country. For centuries his were a people enslaved, and then freed to poverty and powerlessness, a bloody stain on our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, and they now celebrate - we now celebrate - the inauguration of one of their own as President.

It was only forty years ago that African Americans were allowed to march in an inaugural parade.

It is one of the miracles of genius of our democracy that we can have these peaceful transfers of power from one president to another, from one party to another, and now from one people to another.

It awes me.

And there are three million or more people in the bitter January cold of our capital to witness it.

This is the biggest party our country has ever thrown. I for one, plan to enjoy it.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

(Langston Hughes)

Edited to add: Aretha Franklin is sheer genius.

Edited to add: Congratulations, Mr. President.

Well, let's see if the looming end of our industrial civilization has changed anybody's vote. This is the second in a series of polls to see who the people reading my blog prefer for U.S. President.

All candidates who are on the ballot in enough states to win a majority in the U.S. Electoral College are listed.

Poll #1265852 Presidential Preference Poll #2
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Vote for President and Vice-President of the United States:

Poll will remain open for 24 hours (more or less). I'll post another one next week.

From: Minister of the Treasury Paulson
Subject: REQUEST FOR URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

n.b. several versions of this have come across my (virtual) desk. This is my favourite.

... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.

(bet you thought I'd forgotten!)

I thought it might be fun to run a series of polls and we draw closer to the actual election to see who the people reading my blog prefer for U.S. President.

All candidates who are on the ballot in enough states to win a majority in the U.S. Electoral College are listed.

Poll #1261270 Presidential Preference Poll #1
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Vote for President and Vice-President of the United States:

Edited to add: Poll will remain open for 24 hours. I'll post another one next week.


Edited to add: Poll closed!

First off, I'm glad to see that somebody reminded Senator Obama that his opponent in the fall is Senator McCain, the Bush record, and Governor Palin, in that order.

Senator Obama would be wise to let Senator Biden go after Governor Palin and to leave well enough alone himself.

Despite the spin, the Governor is no newbie:

Far from being a reprise of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin was a clear-eyed politician who, from the day she took office, knew exactly what she had to do and whose toes she would step on to do it.

The surprise is not that she has been in office for such a short time but that she has succeeded in each of her objectives. She has exposed corruption; given the state a bigger share in Alaska's energy wealth; and negotiated a deal involving big corporate players, the US and Canadian governments, Canadian provincial governments, and native tribes - the result of which was a £13 billion deal to launch the pipeline and increase the amount of domestic energy available to consumers. This deal makes the charge of having "no international experience" particularly absurd.

Read the whole article and wake up to the fact that Senator McCain learned strategy at Annapolis. Palin is no Quayle.

Thanks to redoubtable1 for this link: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_palin.html.

Let's get the facts right and not waste time on repeating false rumours that end up making us look foolish.

We must fight them on the issues and on the record of the previous eight years.

Let me repeat that.

We must fight them on the issues and on the record of the previous eight years.

Don't throw this away, people. There's a lot more at stake than pride or even righteous anger.

Edited to add: I'm shutting down the comments on this one for the moment.

Part the first, wherein the author establishes his bona fides

I am a lifelong Democrat. Growing up in Chicago with a father in the pipefitter's union pretty much set me on that course, but I was not an indifferent Democrat.

In high school, I worked on Gary Hart's presidential campaign. I handed out flyers in Chicago neighbourhoods that under any other circumstance could be dangerous to my physical well-being.

I supported Paul Tsongas and Bill Clinton. I've worked for campaigns, national and local, calling constituents and stuffing envelopes and even speechwriting.

For a while, I served on my County's Central Committee.

Over the years, I've had my arguments on policy and philosophy with other party members, but we've always come together on issues relating to social justice, civil rights, and (more recently) fiscal sanity.

While he is not the Second Coming (contrary to what some supporters may think), Senator Barack Obama is the Necessary Man. He has the skills and vision to put this country back on the correct path, a path that under this current administration has been forsaken.

He has the charisma of Bobby Kennedy and the wonkitude of President Clinton, and he is clearly what our country badly needs right now.

And as much as I may joke that Joe Biden is the reincarnation of Gerald Ford, I respect his background and his service in the Senate.

I am proud to be a Democrat, and I'm proud of our candidates.

Part the second, wherein the author chides his fellow party members

Having said that, however, I am profoundly ashamed of some members of my party.

When Senator McCain chose Governor Palin as his running mate on the Republican ticket, a great many of my fellow Democrats lost their collective minds.

The knee-jerk contempt and unalloyed vitriol that has been unleashed against the Governor is horrifying.

Attacking the Governor's record, ethical behaviour in office, and political views are required to the proper functioning of our adversarial democracy. This is not the issue.

What shames me deeply are the ad hominem attacks. The nasty, Rove-worthy snipes against her personal life and her family life, inlcuding words and phrases that reveal more about the screeder than the screedee.

You know the ones. Retarded breeder. Welfare queen. Hick. Skanky. White trash. The ridiculous charge of "faking a pregnancy".

For God's sake, people, can you hear yourselves? This is as bad as, if not worse than, the right-wing nutjob smear campaigns unleased against then-President Clinton. And it's exactly the kind of personal-destruction politics against which Senator Obama is campaigning.

This is not frakkin' high school, people. Grow up.

Part the third, wherein the author issues a grave warning

This election is ours to lose. And those using this sort of language against the Governor are doing their very best to lose it for us.

Senator McCain is many things, but he is not a stupid man. His choice of Governor Palin was brilliant strategy. Never mind the shallow "Hillary voters will flock to her" bit. That was never the plan.

Look for a moment at Senator McCain's problems with his party. Right now, the Republican party is a loose alliance of three very different factions: old-school conservatives, the Evangelical right, and the NeoCons.

They can't agree on policy, much less a candidate, which is why McCain got the nomination at all.

But Governor Palin is all three of these. And she's young.

She can unify the Republican base behind McCain the way few other people could have.

And, like it or not, your personal attacks on Sarah "just plain folks" Palin are going to backfire. Have backfired. Look at the poll numbers, people.

When you get up on your high horse (or ivory tower) and insult the family and lifestyle of Governor Palin, most of America thinks you're insulting their families and lifestyles.

She is middle-America. And the more you attack her for being who she is (instead of what she's done), the more middle-America thinks you're attacking them.

Remember Adlai Stevenson? How well did the perception of disdain for ordinary rural and suburban Americans work out for that campaign?

The more you make Governor Palin the focus of the media and of this campaign, the more you firm up the Republican base and drive the middle to the right.

Focus on Senator McCain. Focus on the spectre of continuing the past eight years of horror and the cheap sale of our liberties. Focus on winning. For America.

You decide.





McCain/Palin or Tigh/Roslin?

Well, it certainly confirms something I've long suspected.

( SPOILER ALERT )

This evening, President Bill Clinton will address the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

His speech will be broadcast all over the nation.

So it is with some wry amusement that I note today is the Feast of Saint Monica.

Clearly, somebody in scheduling at the DNC has a sense of humour.

I encourage all my fellow Washingtonians to vote today for the party and candidate of your choice!


Find your caucus site

Courtesy singingbarista, we have this lovely site that tells you who to vote for based on a laundry list of policy questions.

Here are my results:

1. Theoretical Ideal Candidate (100%)
2. Barack Obama (69%)
3. Ron Paul (69%)
4. Christopher Dodd (63%)
5. Dennis Kucinich (61%)
6. Alan Augustson (campaign suspended) (59%)
7. Al Gore (not announced) (57%)
8. John Edwards (56%)
9. Wesley Clark (not running, endorsed Clinton) (53%)
10. Joseph Biden (53%)

Visit the 2008 Presidential Candidate Selector

For the record, Senator Hillary Clinton came in 11th.

I'd like to draw your attention to the top two picks, who conveniently enough tied. They are not even in the same party. How does that work?

I wonder what he's up to.

(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)

Okay, it's official. Karl Rove is off his meds.

“Let’s face it, I mean, I’m a myth,” Mr. Rove told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” when asked about his critics. “You know, I’m Beowulf, you know, I’m Grendel. I don’t know who I am. But they’re after me.”

Wow. Self-aggrandizement and paranoia. Or how about this one?

Mr. Rove said the Constitution prevented him from complying with a Congressional subpoena to describe his part in the firings of United States attorneys.

When Mr. Wallace argued that executive privilege did not prevent him from answering a reporter’s questions (“Why did you push to fire some U.S. attorneys in the president’s second term?”), Mr. Rove turned testy. “I know you don’t understand you’re being an agent of Congress when you ask me that question,” he said. “But you are.”

Mike Wallace as a Congressional "agent"? Is Karl Rove living in an Indiana Jones world of shadowy myth and secret Nazi agents? Which part does Mr Rove play in this drama?

Well, he claims he was just following orders:

Bob Schieffer... asked Mr. Rove why he was subjecting himself to Sunday morning second-guessing.

“Somebody else made the decision for me,” he said. “I’m just doing what I was instructed to do.”

Hmm. Maybe he got the Grendel thing right after all.

Source

(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)

Posted without comment. Because words fail me.



(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)

Recently, I ran across Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal editorial A Separate Peace. Though it was published in 2005, I think the years since have only strengthened the evidence supporting her assertion:

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon.

As has become obvious in the past years, the Unitary Executive theory endorsed by President Bush differs little from the reality of Rome's Principate. The Republic is under assault from within. Although the Democrats in Congress are now trying to assert Congressional prerogatives, particularly in the US Attorneys scandal [AP], it may well be too little too late.

The White House defiantly stuck by Gonzales on the perjury matter and flatly denied that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller on Thursday contradicted the attorney general's sworn testimony on internal Bush administration dissent over the president's secretive wiretapping program.

This administration has such contempt for Congress, that they order their people to ignore Congressional subpoenas and laugh off obvious prevarication and perjury committed by their officers in front of Congressional committees.

Most telling is this final paragraph from the AP story I cited above:

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee approved a contempt citation against two other Bush confidants, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers. The full House is expected to vote on the citation in the fall, but the Justice Department has said it won't prosecute the two.

The system is broken, so much so that Congress is considering adding inherent contempt back into its arsenal for the first time since the Great Depression.

[I note that Wikipedia's article on Contempt of Congress is listed as "unverifiable" since it "does not cite any references or sources". This, of course, is balderdash, as the article's primary source is Congress's Contempt Power: Law, History, Practice, and Procedure, a PDF written by the Congressional Research Service for the use of Congress that runs 65 pages with no less than 402 footnotes.

It seems pretty well cited to me.]

Our system has been battered before. Take a look at the Grant administration, or those of Harding or Nixon. Look at the Civil War, the Depression, or Vietnam/Watergate. Look at slavery and segregation. And on the cultural and civility front, we're miles ahead of the Andrew Jackson era. It's been simply decades since anybody was stabbed in the US Senate Chamber. You want yellow journalism? FOX is nothing next to the newspapers for which that phrase was coined in the lead-up to the Spanish-American War.

Somehow, we always bounced back. Somewhere, we always believed that the system could be fixed, and if we couldn't fix it there were men and women in our Constitutional Republic who could and would.

Yet, the feeling in much of the country this time seems to be - not so much. Why?


(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)

Once again, Keith Olbermann is more eloquent than I.



(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)

( Transcript )

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. [George, George]

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. [Signing Statements]

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. [Immigration, Land]

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. ["consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power"]

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. [DHS]

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: [Defiance of International Law]

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: [Extrajudicial Prisoners, Guantánamo]

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: [Extraordinary Rendition]

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: [Unitary Executive]

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

WE, THEREFORE, THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. [Treason]

— John Hancock

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

---

How many more violations can you find? Enjoy your Independence Day.

(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)

First, read this: Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence.

Now for some reaction:

"This decision to commute the sentence of a man who compromised our national security cements the legacy of an Administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division, one that has consistently placed itself and its ideology above the law." (Sen. Barack Obama)

"Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today. ... In George Bush's America, it is apparently okay to misuse intelligence for political gain, mislead prosecutors and lie to the FBI." (Sen. John Edwards)

"This administration clearly believes its officials are above the law." (Gov. Bill Richardson [NM])

I, on the other hand, can't decide whether I'm angry or amused. How blatant can they be before the "opposition" starts opposing?

If only Dick Cheney would shoot a guy... oh, wait. Never mind.

Congress united on Iraq pull-out

The US Senate has voted to approve a bill which requires US troops to start withdrawing from Iraq by October.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6597079.stm

Excellent editorial in The Guardian.

"It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."

"As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

"That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way...."

Discuss.

"The Legislative Branch has no oversight responsibility over the White House." (Tony Snow, White House Press Secretary, 22 March 2007)

I confess myself disappointed - this is perfectly ludicrous. Certainly they can come up with a less feeble response than this?

Or perhaps not.

Edited to add: Wikipedia on Congressional Oversight.

And if that's too complicated for the President, perhaps he should check out the US government's site for children, Ask Ben: "One of the most important implied powers is Congress’s authority to investigate and oversee the executive branch and its agencies, such as the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6475985.stm

Your move, Mr. President.

Well, that's just swell. The President of the United States has just told the United States Senate to get stuffed.

In short, here's the scoop: Attorney General Alberto "The Waterboarding Kid" Gonzales fired a number of US Attorneys for "poor performance", apparently with White House approval.

It turns out that that these particular US Attorneys all had very good ratings and almost all had good to great performance evaluations.

It also turns out that every one of them either refused to back down from ethical investigations against Republicans or refused to pursue unwarranted investigations against Democrats.

It's pretty clear that Gonzales lied to Congress when they first tried to investigate this stupidity.

The White House and the Attorney General's office are only handing over some of the papers requested by the Senate, and now the President has said that no officials of the Executive branch will respond to Congressional subpoenas.

And who pursues the scofflaws who refuse to appear before Congress? Why, that would be...




wait for it...




the Attorney General's office.

If this all plays out the way the principals are indicating they're going to play it, then Congress will only have one option remaining.

Impeachment.

Stay tuned.