We Have A War Czar!!!

Finally. After what seemed from here to be a heck of a lot of arm-twisting, the White House has found somebody who agrees to be "War Czar".  Who is it? Follow the link for all the info…

President Bush finally…

President Bush finally finds someone to take the ‘war czar’ job: Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute [...]

Tags: War Czar, White House, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bush Administration

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Suggestion of the Day

Several options for dealing with Alberto Gonzales.  Take  your pick.

Disbar Gonzales

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer but I am married to one. And I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night as well (ok, that part isn’t true…) Unless there is a special exemption that would allow this nation’s top ranking prosecutor the right to, well, break laws and run afoul of any of the ethical and other conduct codes by the American Bar Association (which all other attorneys must follow), how does Alberto Gonzales still have a license to practice law? This past week, members of his [...]

Tags: Alberto Gonzales, American Bar Association

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The End of an Era

Jerry Falwell died today. There is a short list of people who epitomize the term "televangelist", and Fallwell was certainly among them. He played the roll, but (to me, at least) failed to live the life.

"He Thought It Would Be Dramatic" by digby Every…

Everyone will be writing remembrances and elegies for Jerry Falwell today because he had an enormous influence on American life of the past quarter century which will continue to be felt for some time to come. In his favor, I can say that he always seemed to be a man of good humor and calm demeanor who seemed to know on some level that he was playing a role, whether political or theatrical. But his rather placid personality can’t make up for the fact that he was at the epicenter of some of the most "uncivil" and unseemly political hit-jobs of [...]

Of course, MSNBC had to fall flat on its journalistic face, using a quote about Falwell from a satire website…Oooops…

MSNBC punks itself!

Contessa Brewer uses Whitehouse. org to describe Falwell’s influence in the White House…Her producer gave her this: [video clips here] "Dr. Falwell has earned his role as the defacto Executive Director of Domestic and Global Policy for the White House. How much influence did he have over George Bush…  The only problem with that is it’s [...]

Tags: Falwell, Televangelist

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Those Brainy Kids

Brainy, as long as they don’t want to go on to college.  Then, the numbers don’t look so good.

The Kids These Days….Part 567

Yet another study about how well our high school students are doing:Only one-quarter of high school students who take a full set of college-preparatory courses four years of English and three each of mathematics, science [...]

Tags: Education, Math, Science, College Prep

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Obama’s On Board

He’s okay with the Feingold-Reid bill.  Waiting on the other big names.

Obama to Support Feingold-Reid Bill

Illinois Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama today announced that he will support the Feingold-Reid bill to end funding for George W. Bush’s war in Iraq in March of 2008. “Today, 1518 days after it began, the war in Iraq rages on, with no sign of a resolution,” said Obama in a statement. “The Iraqi people appear [...]

Hmmm. Not so fast, buddy..

Obama Misleads On "Support" For Reid-Feingold

Sen. Barack Obama’s "support" for Reid-Feingold is based on a phony description of what the Reid-Feingold framework is about: [...]

Tags: Obama, Feingold, Reid, Iraq War

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Losing The Base

Today’s chapter in the ongoing saga of how the GOP is forsaking the base of the party.  When you start losing NW Arkansas, somebody better start paying attention and look for some fixes.  Really.  via Arkansasblog.com and the Arkansas Times newspaper

Anti-war Republicans

The University of Arkansas has released results of a poll of 602 residents of Benton, Washington, Carroll and Madison counties — fortress GOP, more or less. It shows 53.1 percent believe the Iraq war was a mistake and that 57.4 percent favor bringing troops home in the next year. Only 37 percent, even in yellow-dog Republicanland, want [...]

Tags: Republicans, GOP, Arkansas, Iraq War

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Polling Disaster

And, no, we’re not talking about President Bush’s poll numbers.  We’re talking about the approval rating for Congress.  A Congress that promised much, but is accomplishing little.  That, it would seem, is at the core of these numbers…

Gallup Poll: Last Year’s Congress Had Higher Approval Rating Than This Year’s Congress

Remember last year’s Congress? The GOP-led, “Do Nothing Congress” full of crooks, big spenders and pedophiles – THAT Congress. Enter the “New Democratic Congress” — much less corrupted than last year’s Congress, at least at this point in the game. Well, according to Gallup, we approved of last year’s Congressional crooks [...]

Tags: Gallup Poll, Congress

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Happy Anniversary, Video Games!

I guess this ages me.  And, likely, many of you.  Remember when "pong" first appeared?  40 years ago, today.

May 15th marks the 40 year anniversary of the first games hooked up to the television. An article on the 1up site tells the story of Ralph Baer, Bill Harrison, and Bill Rusch working at the Sanders Associates company on a little game called Pong. They go into a great deal of detail on the development of the console, going so far as to include [...]

Tags: Video Games, Pong

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Spectacular Testimony

The kind certain to spark fireworks and great debate.  via Think Progress, this summary of the morning’s testimony from James Comey. 

Comey Breaks Silence: White House Tried To Force Incapacitated Ashcroft To Back Warrantless Spying

In March 2004, President Bush’s warrantless domestic spying efforts were temporarily suspended after then-acting Attorney General James Comey refused to sign on to an extension of the program “amid concerns about its legality and oversight.” Today, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Comey detailed the extraordinary and potentially illegal efforts made by Alberto Gonzales and Andrew [...]

Warrantless Wiretaps and Outrage Fatigue

Is anyone else suffering from outrage fatigue? James Comey testified today about a visit that Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card made to John Ashcroft in the hospital. Ashcroft was recovering from surgery and Comey was Acting Attorney General. Card and Gonzales wanted the Justice Dept. to sign off on warrantless wiretaps. According to Comey, Ashcroft told them to [..]

And, then, Tony Snow tried to downplay Ashcoft’s illness..

Snow: Ashcroft Wasn’t That Ill, It Wasn’t Like ‘His Brain Didn’t Work’

Tags: Comey, Gonzales, Card, Ashcroft, DOJ, Warrantless Spying

Tags: Tony Snow

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It’s Debate-Night

For the GOP Presidential contenders.  In case you’re not watching, here’s the way things stacked up going into the talk-a-thon…

Giuliani Leads GOP Hopefuls

A new Harris Poll shows Rudy Giuliani "remains atop the ranks of Republican presidential hopefuls. But an as-yet-undeclared candidate, actor and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, has elbowed his way into the top tier of potential nominees and now rivals Arizona Sen. John McCain in popularity." Giuliani leads with [...]

Tags: Harris Poll, Giuliani, Thompson, McCain, 2008 Presidential Race

We’ll keep our eyes open for post-debate numbers….

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Back-Stabbing

Washington-style.  Gonzales wields the political knife and…

Gonzales Throws McNulty Under The Bus

During an event this morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Attorney General Alberto Gonzales launched an unabashed and shameless finger-pointing campaign at outgoing Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, blaming him for the U.S. attorney scandal. Minimizing his own role, Gonzales said McNulty has “most of the operational authority and decisions” at the Department [...]

Tags: Gonzales, McNulty, DOJ, Justice

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Another Victim

And his dad speaks out, wielding powerful words.

Heartbreak Ridge

I felt an authentic emotional jolt just now when I learned that the son of Andrew Bacevich has been killed in Iraq. Bacecvich, himself a former career military officer-turned-professor, wrote one of the books that has most impressed me in the last few years.  Written from a conservative-realist point of view, his "The New American Militarism: [...]

Tags: Bacevich, Iraq, New American Militarism

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Health Care In America

Another example of a broken system.  Don’t think so?  Consider a new report released today…

Getting Beat By France and Germany On Health Care

Republicans tell us that the health care system needs only minor tweaking. Their remedies are HSA tax shelters for the wealthy, and tax credits for those who already can’t afford coverage. And they say that better technology and empowering consumers to make better choices are the panacea. But they also tell us that any move towards universal health care is a move towards socialized medicine, and must be avoided at all costs. What they aren’t telling you is that they like the current dysfunctional system because [...]

Tags: Health Care, Universal Health Care

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The Military Mind

Here’s one of those outstanding examples of how the blogosphere can serve as a conduit for multiple thoughts from multiple writers…all with a common suggestion…

President Bush Chides Us To Listen To His “Generals On The Ground”… Well, Let’s Listen To One…

A huge hat-tip goes out to my close friend and co-editor here at The GTL, Ms. Megan Donovan, for her excellent, “must read” post at her personal site, the C’est Moi Political Blog entitled “There Are None More Qualified To Speak–None Who Have Sacrificed More. We Should Listen”… An excerpt: “There are many BushSpeak mantras; few [...]

Tags: Iraq War, Generals On The Ground

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Overstepping The Boundary

It’s just so obvious that this is not supposed to happen.  Is it a single, over-zealous clergyman?  Or symbolic of some more pervasive, more acceptable by the powers that be?

PEEK: Navy vet: Chaplains tried converting me

Radio Free Chimp catches an interesting Des Moines Register article: "Navy veteran David Miller said that when he checked into the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City, he didn’t realize he would get a hard sell for Christian fundamentalism along with treatment for his [...]

Tags: Veterans, Christian Fundamentalism

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Coming Back

To haunt us.  I’m a bit confused by this report.  I don’t quite understand why we’d actually release the "dangerous" Gitmo inmates.  Even if the others lied about their background, isn’t our intelligence good enough to verify that?

Catch and Release

Six men released from Guantanamo Bay prison re-emerged as Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. They included a man who assumed control of Taliban operations in southern Afghanistan; another went on to kidnap Chinese engineers while a third was described by al-Jazeera as the "deputy defense minister of [...]

Tags: Guantanamo Bay, Gitmo, Afghanistan, Taliban

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Caught in the Crossfire

Between politics and reproductive rights.  She’s a 14 year old girl who was raped.  And wronged.

Real life…..

Shark-Fu has posted about a 14-year-old friend of hers who was raped and not given emergency contraception at the hospital. She has tried to help her friend, but the window was closed and now they have to wait for a few weeks to see if she is pregnant. But I am struggling to turn rage [...]

On the other hand, Planned Parenthood takes it on the chin in another, similar, case..

Undercover at Planned Parenthood Update – Student threatened with lawsuit

***originally posted last night at 930pm, I’m bumping to the top with update: Planned Parenthood Threatens To Sue Undercover Activist…you’ll love reading the quote from the Planned Parenthood official lecturing the student about complying with the law…"we think Lila needs [...]

Tags: Rape, Emergency Contraception, Planned Parenthood

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Recount

Okay, I just have to ask: "Who’s the lucky government employee who got to count all the words in all the books…

Bush Wins Book Bet in Recount

"President Bush and his consigliere Karl Rove bet on who had read the most books in a year," reports UPI. "Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told friends Rove won with 117 books and Bush was a close second [...]

Tags: Karl Rove, President Bush, Books

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Fixing the National Guard

American’s National Guard is broken, but through no fault of its own. The question is, how do you fix it.  Patrick Leahy has a suggestion, but the big bosses in the military don’t like it.  Read on, via the Politico…

‘Blank check’ for Iraq needed at home

National Guard at home is bushed, while National Guard in Iraq is blessed [...]

Tags: National Guard, Patrick Leahy

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The Window Closes

According to at least one international report, we’ve missed our chance to dodge the global warming bullet.  Just a little something to keep in mind, next time you run into a friend who bought into the "oh, there’s no climate change problem" arguments…

Ten-Year Climate Warming Window Closing

Climate change may have passed a key tipping point that could mean temperatures rising more quickly than predicted and it being harder to tackle global warming [...]

Tags: Global Warming, Climate Change.

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