Agreeing with a Republican

Arnold Schwarzenegger intones that Roman Polanski should be treated like everyone else. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he means that Polanski should be accorded every privilege of convicted statutory rapists.

That is the minimum that our Constitution requires. The odd thing is that the core American principle of equal justice needs to be stated by politicians. Odd also is that it's news.

Or am I just another naive refugee from sentimental Arthurian musicals?

Hall of mirrors

CNN pimps for Liz Cheney. How else to explain this recycled item?


Here's the two-month-old rendition:


Look closely. It's the same story by the same author, both based on watching Fox, but today's item refers to the May item in both structure and content.

Lauren Kornreich is clearly a hack. Neither of these stories is worthwhile, neither has any rationale for Cheney as a candidate rather than an appointee, and neither has any response whatsoever from anyone who might raise such doubts. I've got to give this to Kornreich: She got paid twice for the same flaccid piece of writing.

Click images to see full original stories. Original. I crack myself up.

Every time

Rush Limbaugh - divorced three times, allegedly former opiate pill addict (to the point of deafness), Viagra traveller, and obvious blowhard gasbag - is the public face of the Republican Party. His long history of race-baiting doesn't disqualify him.

Every time he attacks or shouts down or demands fealty from a prominent Republican - say Colin Powell - the world gets another view of the ugly underside of right-wing politics. Pretty soon, that may be all that's left.

Except for the obvious danger of such extreme polarization and the inchoate alienated rage of some members of his audience (see comments here), this is good news for the American polity.

Joined at the ...

Eliot Spitzer was caught in a prostitution scandal a year ago. He has this to say about it:

It was an egregious violation of behavior that I fell into for many reasons, but none of them an excuse or justifiable.

I'm sure that David Vitter has said similar mea culpas over his past two years. It's hard to judge any public figure's sincerity base solely on words.

However, there is one difference that's pretty striking: David Vitter remains a member of the U.S. Senate after 634 days as a known consorter with whores - and I'm not even counting the first time he is alleged to have paid to play.

Viagra for the Confederacy

Because the two bestest times of all time were the Civil War and the Great Depression, a couple of Confederate/Republican golden oldies are sweeping the nation. Well, not exactly the nation, but the Republican back benches in those citadels of enlightenment, Montana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.

Some dipshit two-bit Oklahoman would be happy to condemn his fellow citizens to become Okies.

From Montana to South Carolina, lawmakers in mostly red states have pushed ahead with measures calling for state sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment, saying the federal government has overstepped its bounds with the stimulus package. The states are calling for the right to ignore laws they deem unconstitutional.

This is what gets them excited. I hope there's not little blue pill for it, although they are trying to deal with their political impotence.

Look, we settled this in 1865 after killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of loyal Americans and people whose children would once again be loyal Americans. Some of the latter were my relatives.

You states rights idiots don't have the power to unilaterally declare a federal law unconstitutional, as if you can even spell it. It doesn't matter what bullshit law you pass in Oklahoma or South Carolina (perversely proud home of Fort Sumter) or Montana or at your local militia meeting.

Of course, I guess we thought we had this settled even before the Civil War, when in the 1780s we ditched the Articles of Confederation in favor of the stronger government in the Constitution.

Why is CNN covering this fake and bullshit-filled trend? You don't think Lauren Kornreich called up Republicans in every state legislator, do you? The Republican press machine must have issued a release, which she dutifully typed up.

Two sets of books

Shorter Condi Rice: I was a Bushist, but I'm also a nice person in my family life.