Category: GOP

Bad Judge of Character.

Going over the heads of the Democrats in Congress, President Uniter-not-a-Divider gives segregationist Judge Charles Pickering a recess appointment (which he can hold until January 2005, after the seating of the next Congress.) In case you missed it, Pickering’s segregationist backstory was ably fleshed out by historian Sean Wilentz eight months ago.

Lies in, Lies out.

Building on the recent revelation by Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill that the administration started planning a war in Iraq immediately upon taking office — a revelation that dovetailed all-too-well with the recent Carnegie Endowment report on the administration’s WMD deceptions — Senator Ted Kennedy puts the war in perspective. “President Bush said it all when a television reporter asked him whether Saddam actually had weapons of mass destruction, or whether there was only the possibility that he might acquire them. President Bush answered, ‘So what’s the difference?’ The difference, Mr. President, is whether you go to war or not. No President of the United States should employ misguided ideology and distortion of the truth to take the nation to war. In doing so, the President broke the basic bond of trust between government and the people. If Congress and the American people knew the whole truth, America would never have gone to war.” Quite a good speech and worth a read, if nothing else than because no less a right-wing freak show than Tom DeLay found it “sad” and “disgusting.”

In related news, Rick Perlstein examines Dubya’s electoral exit strategy: “George Bush is selling out Iraq. Gone are his hard-liners’ dreams of setting up a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic republic, a light unto the Middle Eastern nations. The decision makers in the administration now realize these goals are unreachable. So they’ve set a new goal: to end the occupation by July 1, whether that occupation has accomplished anything valuable and lasting or not. Just declare victory and go home…Such is the mess this president seems willing to leave behind in order to save his campaign.“

Moon, Mars, and Beyond.

“I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon,” once quipped Jerry Pournelle. “I never dreamed
that I would see the last.” Hopefully, we can now prove him wrong. Dubya officially announced his space plan in front of NASA’s DC headquarters today, and the upshot is this: More scientists, less entertainers, a Research Lab in every city, and he’s going to disband all the Spearmen and Pikemen still lying around so he can build the SS Planetary Party Lounge.

Ok, just joking…some of y’all out there might think that was funny. At any rate, the plan is the ISS by 2007, the CEV by 2014, the moon by 2015, and Mars thereafter. Say what you will about election year boondoggles, but I still think creating and funding long-term goals for NASA is a wise investment. (Besides, if you want to cry election-year boondoogle, you don’t need to go any farther than Dubya’s ridiculous $1.5 billion marriage-promotion plan.) NASA still has serious organizational and cultural flaws, sure, but I think it’ll be better able to address them if there’s at least some semblance of a “vision thing” to build on.

The Party’s Over.

Reformers rejoice as interest groups on the left and right sputter to make sense of the brave new McCain-Feingold world. Everyone seems to agree that McConnell v. FEC is both a surprisingly bold decision and bad news for the Dems in the short term. Well, so be it. With the Supreme Court finally admitting that dollars debase democracy, the door is now open for tougher campaign finance laws in the very near future.

Know Your Enemy.

“‘He’d be like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, ‘the operative said. ‘When he’s being questioned, he gets redder and redder, like his head is exploding, and then he blurts out, “You can’t handle the truth.” Dean is just exactly like that. I see it written all over him.'” Dubya’s minions prep for a race against Dean.

Woohoo!

By a vote of 5-4 (Justice O’Connor the swing vote as expected), the Supreme Court upheld the McCain–Feingold soft-money ban today in McConnell v. FEC. Well, Scalia may call this a “sad day for the freedom of speech,” but I for one think this is great, great news. “Money, like water, will always find an outlet,” as the majority put it, but at least the highest Court in the land has now recognized the corrosive impact of unregulated loot on the political process. This decision will hopefully do much to disentangle the pernicious conflation of speech and money in Buckley v. Valeo, and set the stage for continued meaningful campaign finance reform in the years to come. While McConnell v. FEC doesn’t eliminate the bad taste of Bush v. Gore, it is a huge step in the right direction by this Court.

President Potty-Mouth?

The White House tsk-tsks John Kerry for the F-word. C’mon, now. Kerry’s youth-targeted outburst in Rolling Stone undoubtedly has a whiff of Gore-like “let-your-hair-down” calculation/desperation about it, but let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill here. We all know good and well that our presidents and political leaders have been swearing up a blue streak since time immemorial. (Richard “expletive deleted” Nixon is just the most notorious example.) And it wasn’t all that long ago that George “Major League” Dubya and Big Time needed their own mouths washed out with soap. So let he who is without sin cast the first #$%@ stone.

Twenty to Remember (and a Ten to Forget.)

By way of Value Judgment, the 20 Most Annoying Conservatives of 2003. Partisan? Oh, hell yeah, and funny to boot. And it’s also where I found this ridiculous link about the GOP trying to kick FDR off the dime. Look, if you’re going to put Reagan on the currency, it only makes sense to put him on one of the crazy big bills, and by that I mean something larger than a ten. The way Ronnie squandered our nation’s money during his eight years in office, placing him on anything less than the $1000 would be an affront to his vaunted “legacy.” Update: Even Nancy’s against it.