Headstones and Head Games

As previously stated, my Dominionist friends do not have the votes to force their will on an informed electorate, at least not for the moment. To accomplish their goal of overthrowing our Democratic Government, they need to chip away at it bit by bit. Freedom is not something that disappears in an instant, the gradual removal of civil liberties must be done slowly, so people can get use to them without realizing they are gone (frog in a pot method).

This brings us to an article last week in the WaPo, but one that did not get a lot of National Airtime:

Administration Yields on Wiccan Symbol
Pentacle to Be Permitted on Tombstones in U.S. Military Burial Grounds
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 24, 2007; Page A12

Facing lawsuits by veterans and their families, the Bush administration relented yesterday and agreed to allow the Wiccan pentacle -- a five-pointed star inside a circle -- on tombstones at Arlington National Cemetery and other U.S. military burial grounds...for nearly a decade, the department had refused to act on requests for the pentacle, without a clear reason.

In yesterday's legal settlement, the VA agreed to grant all the pending requests within two weeks and to approve new ones on an expedited basis for 30 days...The settlement stipulates, however, that the plaintiffs must not keep or disclose any documents handed over by the government during the discovery phase of the lawsuit. Lawyers familiar with the case said that some documents suggested the VA had political motives for rejecting the pentacle.

For almost ten f*cking years the VA played games with the Wiccan Veterans, because a strong Dominionist Policy exists in the Republican Congress and the Presidency, low keyed, but always targeting minority/poor/marginal groups who often do not have majority support. So ingrained was this naked bigotry that the lawsuit against the National Cemetery Administration went all the way up to oral arguments before they caved in. The NCA knew that it did not have a legal leg to stand on and it still insisted on delaying the inevitable (at the cost of $225,000 of your taxpayer dollars for legal cost). Meshungina!

The war against Wicca was an attempt to slip into the mainstream ideas that the average Joe/Josephine would reject if they substituted Cross for Pentagram (religious tolerance in America is mixed but improving). The “faith-based” inmate ministry is another example of this.

When Judge Robert Pratt ruled against the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, American Enterprise Institute Professor Joseph Knippenberg agreed with him. Some major points:

• There is no comparable secular or religious program elsewhere in the Iowa prison system. Inmates who want a long-term comprehensive rehabilitation program have no other choices.

• The living conditions and privileges afforded InnerChange participants are sufficiently superior to those afforded the general prison population as to be incentives to join the program. In effect, inmates are rewarded for their participation in a religious program.

Did the Mark Earley, President of Interchange deny this. Hell no, he was proud of it! And while acknowledging that IFI's program is "faith-based" Earley attempts to down play this idea, insisting that that Muslims, Wiccans, and Druids have all graduated from the program, which does not require inmates to convert to Christianity.

Why does the idea of freedom of conscience so offend the Dominionist. That is for my next entry. The answer may not be what you think.

Am I Psychic or Just Lucky

I'm just lucky. As an associate member of CSICOP and a confirmed skeptic, I happen to know that all of that paranormal stuff is a load of fertilizer (Magical Thinking).

Somethings however are not funny, even if they do not make the Six O'clock news:

They’re at it again: A week since the SCOTUS began dismembering Roe anti-choice lunatics are terrorizing women’s clinics, as reported by the Associated Press in a very brief piece headlined, “Explosive found at Austin women’s clinic.”

...The national press? Aside from 97 words from the AP and a brief mention from CNN —nothing (according to a Nexis search at 5:15 pm today).

Manifestations of the devils agents, and therefore worthy of death. While this is truly an amazing coincidence, it does illustrate a major point in my previous blog entry (thank you for the education Mr. Clarkson) about how the Dominionist think and why. Even in 2007 under the reign of King George II , they have not gone away.

(Hat tip to Femniste. Mr. Clarkson has a post on Talk to Action about Lake of fire, a film that explores the taboo subject of Domestic Terrorism against Providers and Clinics).

Update I: They caught the Son of a B*tch. Score one for the good guys. Still not much about this in the national press.

A Prison, a Perception and a Prayer

This past February most of the Lapdog Press fixated on Speaker Pelosi's Plane while the following article went unnoticed in the Washington Post:

Ban on Prison Religious Program Challenged
U.S. Judge Ruled Evangelical Rehabilitation Effort in Iowa Is Unconstitutional
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 25, 2007; Page A13

CHICAGO -- Interested inmates at Newton Correctional Facility in Iowa receive teaching material that declares: "Criminal behavior is a manifestation of an alienation between the self and God. Acceptance of God and Biblical principles results in cure through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State...sued to stop the program...U.S. District Judge Robert W. Pratt sided with Americans United, ruling last year that the Iowa program is "pervasively sectarian." He heard testimony from prisoners of other faiths who felt unwelcome in a program that gives advantages to inmates who accept the intensive religious teachings.

This is just one of many stealth attempts by what has been misleadingly called the Christian Right to use the power of the State to push a biblical government on a secular society.

Now we have to define two things up front: Who am I talking about and what do they believe? I am referring to a political movement, NOT A RELIGION. It is not as organized as the DNC or GOP, but it does have it's own party website. And while this sounds like the ravings of a lunatic, the Constitution Party really does want to replace our Democratic form of Government with a Theocracy based on their interpretation of the Old Testament.

Mission Statement
Constitution Party Mission Statement

The mission of the Constitution Party is to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity through the election, at all levels of government, of Constitution Party candidates who will uphold the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. It is our goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions and to restore American jurisprudence to its original Biblical common-law foundations.

Not all believers in Reconstructionist theory belong to the CP. The Republican Party has been infiltrated by these religious fascists over the past 25 years. But how do Dominionist or "Constitutionalist" differ from standard conservatives (even religious ones) when it comes to dealing with the opposition party.

Okay, while it seems incredible it is none the less true: Dominionist elements of the Christian Right believe that those who oppose them are not political opponents with a different governing philosophy. They see them as demons or agents of Satan, literally the Devils minions on Earth. And because they believe that fighting against liberals/gays/ clinic workers is a form of religious warfare, then anything goes, including voter disenfranchisement (Florida), arrest with out trial (Gitmo), arson (abortion clinics) and murder ( abortion doctors).

At this point, some will think the Commander is smoking the good stuff. No I am not:

Utah County GOP delegate links illegal immigration to Satan
By Deborah Bulkeley
Deseret Morning News
Thursday, April 26, 2007

The devil is sticking his pitchfork into the nation's immigration politics. At least that's what one of Utah County's Republican delegates thinks. Don Larsen, a district chairman, has submitted a resolution equating illegal immigration to "Satan's plan to destroy the U.S. by stealth invasion" for debate at Saturday's Utah County Republican Party Convention. Referring to a plan by the devil for a "New World Order ... as predicted in the Scriptures," the resolution calls for the Utah County Republican Party to support "closing the national borders to illegal immigration to prevent the destruction of the U.S. by stealth invasion.".

Until you understand the World View of these "spiritual warriors" you can not devise an opposition strategy. Attempting a political dialogue is useless; these people can not be reasoned with or persuaded with conventional political debate. Writer Joe Bageant wrote the following article in May 2004:

The Covert Kingdom
Thy Will be Done, On Earth as It is in Texas

By JOE BAGEANT

...Evangelical born-again Christians of one stripe or another were then, and are now, 40% of the electorate, and they support Bush 3-1. And as long as their clergy and their worst instincts tell them to, they will keep on voting for him, or someone like him, regardless of what we view as his arrogant folly and sub-intelligence. Forget about changing their minds. These Christians do not read the same books we do...and in fact, consider even CBS and NBC super-liberal networks of porn and the Devil's lies.

Given how fundamentalists see the modern world, they may as well be living in Iraq or Syria, with whom they share approximately the same Bronze Age religious tenets. They believe in God, Rumsfeld's Holy War and their absolute duty as God's chosen nation to kick Muslim ass up one side and down the other. In other words, just because millions of Christians appear to be dangerously nuts does not mean they are marginal.

So yeah, they are dangerously nuts. But is Bageant right about their influence (40% of the electorate?) During the election of Nov 2006, CNN exit polls show no change in so called evangelical supporters.

70% of White Evangelicals, those that are mostly likely to follow Christian Reconstructionist or Dominionist beliefs still voted for Bush despite Iraq/Katrina/Jobs disappearing, so the first part seems to be true. But Bageants claim not withstanding, the fact that the D's regained control of Congress demonstrated that it was not enough. The followers of Dominion beliefs and their lackeys do not yet have the numbers to get themselves elected unless the majority of their fellow citizens remain politically silent.

The movement is very patient and tends to take the long view. But they are not omnipotent, and sometimes individual Dominionist forget that they only hold elected office by not calling attention to themselves or openly defying the law. The folly of Roy and his Rock or the Schiavo affair shows what happens when a Dominionist abandons the Stealth Strategy that bought them to power.

Courts, Control and Domionist Christians

Lost among the Virginia Tech Shooting this week was a decision by the nine black robes (aka the Supremes) to uphold the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban of 2003. The term PBA is a is a non-medical term coined by abortion opponents with no scientific rational (but a nice sounding name if you want to push a particular agenda). The scientific procedure is most likely Intact dilation and extraction (IDX or Intact D&X), but again doctors who perform abortions can not be sure if they violated the law:

Did I Violate the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban?
A doctor ponders a new era of prosecution
By Warren M. Hern
Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2003, at 7:17 PM ET

As the misleadingly titled "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban" makes its way to the president's desk, anti-abortion groups are celebrating their public relations victory. But beneath the hoopla, the bill's medical consequences remain murky. Exactly which procedures will be banned, and which doctors prosecuted? Will the anti-abortion lobby be happier with the alternative methods to which doctors will resort? If not, which methods and doctors will be targeted next? Will this ban have a chilling effect on related procedures? If so, will it prevent abortions—or births?

Welcome to the rabbit hole Alice, where the controllers attempt to run your lives. As Rachel Maddow of Air America pointed out in "King" Kennedy's tortured written opinion, the paternalistic crap that he spews toward our female citizens is sickening:

Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child... Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision...While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained... Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow...

In a decision so fraught with emotional consequence some doctors may prefer not to disclose precise details of the means that will be used, confining themselves to the required statement of risks the procedure entails. From one standpoint this ought not to be surprising. Any number of patients facing imminent surgical procedures would prefer not to hear all details, lest the usual anxiety preceding invasive medical procedures become the more intense. This is likely the case with the abortion procedures here in issue.

Oh puhleese doctor Kennedy, spare me such a choice, I am getting the vapors. I'll just head back home and bake you some cookies like a good little wifey.

As Justice Ruth the convert says in her minority opinion, sexist crap:

Revealing in this regard, the Court invokes an antiabortion shibboleth for which it concededly has no reliable evidence: Women who have abortions come to regret their choices, and consequently suffer from "[s]evere depression and loss of esteem." Ante, at 29.7 Because of women's fragile emotional state and because of the "bond of love the mother has for her child," the Court worries, doctors may withhold information about the nature of the intact D&E procedure...The solution the Court approves, then, is not to require doctors to inform women, accurately and adequately, of the different procedures and their attendant risks...Instead, the Court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice, even at the expense of their safety.

This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women's place in the family and under the Constitution--ideas that have long since been discredited. Compare Bradwell v. State(1872) ("Man is, or should be, woman's protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. ... The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfil[l] the noble and benign offices of wife and mother."), with United States v. Virginia(1996) (State may not rely on "overbroad generalizations" about the "talents, capacities, or preferences" of women; "[s]uch judgments have ... impeded ... women's progress toward full citizenship stature throughout our Nation's history")

For those who believe this decision only effects women of loose morals who get an abortion for convenience, your stoned. This is the result of a battle that has been waged since 1800 (Yeah, that long. Go to page 6. Or better still buy the book) between two competing political ideology's that want to run the United States, Theocracy vs. Democracy. The PBA is the most successful and least understood victory for the modern version of Theocratic Politics: Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism. The War against Women is only the mearest fraction of the Dominionist agenda.

In future posts I will expand on how the stealth campaign waged by the Dominionist has succeeded in infiltrating ALL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT; and how this may lead to an overthrow of our Democracy. For those who think they have handle on it, you may not have a clue how bad it really is.

Gods, Guns and Gays

A shooting has just occurred at Virginia Tech yesterday morning, with a final body count of 33, including the gun man, plus an equal number wounded. It had all the symptoms of a spree killer, the the type of Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) with no discernible pattern for a random act of violence that usually ends in suicide.

After the usual period of morning at this senseless tragedy, the focus will eventually turn to one of the three elements of the trifecta that has allowed the former Republican majority to dominate politics from 1994 to 2006, while engaging in a form of class warfare that has screwed the middle class.

My Republican friends are absolutely ruthless when exploiting the fear of Gay marriage terrorist threatening American Values, but this is nothing compared to using gun ownership as a wedge issue. Aided by the NRA, and its legal arm the ILA, this once proud hunting and firearms organization has been so radicalized in the last two decades that President Bush Senior resigned his life time membership (in a 1995 fundraising letter NRA President LaPierre referred to the Secret Service agents who protected President Bush as 'jack booted thugs').

The alliance of the Movement Conservatives and the NRA has been so successful that in 2007, any firearms legislation no matter how reasonable is deemed a threat to liberty; and no politician, D, I or R will bring it up. The Bush administration and the Republican Congress have allowed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) that defined and banned "large capacity ammunition feeding devices" (magazines with capacities of greater than ten rounds) to lapse.

...Because he killed and injured so many victims in a short span of time, some people speculated that Cho used high-capacity magazines containing as many as 33 rounds in each clip.

Under the federal assault-weapons ban enacted in 1994, magazines were limited to 10 rounds. But that ban was allowed to expire in 2004..."The key thing that we have seen in all of these school shootings is easy access to high firepower weapons," said Daniel Vice, an attorney with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "These killings can't be done with baseball bats and knives."

And what of polls and the people? Who do the majority favor, the Brady center or the NRA. According to Harris and Gallup 2004, the majority have said that while they reject the idea of gun ownership being illegal, they would have liked the AWB renewed and stricter laws on the sale of Firearms. (It would not be the first time that a small but well funded group of individuals could affect policy for the rest of us, even if they do so opposite what people actually believe. The lapdog beltway pundits excel at this sort of thing).

If you read this far, you may ask where am I going with this. Well, just one final thought no matter where you stand on guns ownership. According to DOJ, since 1976 Bureau of Justice Statistics show gun homicides have varied between 11,000 to 15,000 per year. Locking up people in large numbers does not affect gun murders:

Between 1974 and 2001, the prevalence of imprisonment increased by nearly 3.8 million. This included a 1.1 million increase in the number of adults in prison (up from 216,000) and a nearly 2.7 million increase in the number of living former prisoners (up from 1,603,000).

My question for those who believe that gun ownership laws should be less restrictive is; can you live with this murder rate? Because under our present rules, it the hidden price you have to pay for your guns.

Logic, Cthia, Reality-Truth

The Commander loves science based fiction, whether print, audio or visual. In addition to old masters Heinlein, Asimov, Vonnegut (we miss you Kurt, RIP), Turtledove, etc.; one of my favorite authors is Diane Duane.

Spocks World was a novel she wrote in 1988, which among other things gave rise to the Vulcan word Cthia, poorly translated as logic, but more correctly meaning reality-truth.

Amanda: It's the modern Vulcan word that we translate as 'logic'. But what it more correctly means is 'reality-truth.' The truth about the universe, the way things really are, rather then the way we would like them to be...The concept says that if we do not tell the universe the truth about itself, if we do not treat it and the people in it as what they are-real and precious-it will turn against us, and none of our affairs will prosper.

After reading this particular gem, I realized that it codified what has always been my life's philosophy, the Universe is what it is, not what we wish it to be.

It is something we Libs only half jokingly refer to as being a 'proud member of the reality based community.' Ron Suskind wrote in the Oct 2004 issue of New York Times Magazine what would become the Gold Standard for how decisions are made in Bush 43 administration. The story is a little strange and extremely frightening:

...I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. ..and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.''...''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Not exactly Cthia. And after all that has happened 2 1/2 years latter; e.g. Katrina, Iraq, Walter Reed, etc., you would think that those on the other side have finally gotten it? Well you would be wrong. The latest insight from Charles Krauthammer:

The Surge: First Fruits

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, April 13, 2007; Page A17

By the day, the debate at home about Iraq becomes increasingly disconnected from the realities of the war on the ground. The Democrats in Congress are so consumed with negotiating among their factions the most clever linguistic device to legislatively ensure the failure of the administration's current military strategy -- while not appearing to do so -- that they speak almost not at all about the first visible results of that strategy.

The news from Anbar is the most promising. Only last fall, the Marines' leading intelligence officer there concluded that the United States had essentially lost the fight to al-Qaeda. Yet just this week, the Marine commandant, Gen. James Conway, returned from a four-day visit to the province and reported that we "have turned the corner."

Evidently somebody forgot to tell the International Herald Tribune that the El Anbar Provence was secured:

(15 April 2007)The U.S. military also announced three U.S. troop deaths, The Associated Press reported. A soldier was killed Sunday while trying to reach an Iraqi police unit under attack in southern Baghdad. Another soldier died Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded while the unit was on a foot patrol south of Baghdad. And marine died the same day in combat in Anbar province.

Why are there no Vulcan's around when you need them. If someone wanted to give me an early Hanukkah present, they would send the President, the Pundits an the Press back to school and give them a crammed course in reality-truth.

Looking for a Head, Losing your Head, and Giving Head

The Commander is back from a short vacation after visiting his mother in Lost Wages, NV. Because she had a dial-up connection, accessing the net was difficult, so no new posts last week.

The morning addition of the WaPo had the following article by Baker and Ricks:

3 Generals Spurn the Position of War 'Czar'
Bush Seeks Overseer For Iraq, Afghanistan
By Peter Baker and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 11, 2007; Page A01

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job...

At least three retired four-star generals...have declined to be considered for the position...underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.

Suppose you look for someone to head your government agency, and no one volunteers? Speaks volumes about The Bush Administration and Iraq, ya think?

Which leads into the idea most eloquently expressed by The Nations Ms. Katrina vanden Heuvel on Monday Nights Colbert Report:

The Nation Magazine opposed this war from the beginning because we understood what a disaster it would be.

We never lost our head; while too much of the Media gave head.

That about sums it up.

When three former Generals, one of whom was in charge of NATO conclude that Iraq War II is such a total Cluster F*ck as to be beyond salvaging, who do I blame?

The Son of a Bush. A little bit, but there is plenty of evidence he is just a figurehead.

"Tricky" Dick Cheney and his Neo-Con Posse. A little bit more, but it's not like they didn't announce to the World their intentions.

The American People for being foolish enough to reelect these fools. Once again only a little. In 2007 the forces of media consolidation have actually nullified the advantages of the information age.

The Main Stream Media. Hell yeah.

Six choices my friends. Six choices that are the news source for majority of Americans. And if the Media Whores are still giving head, what does that say about the chances that the Iraqi bloodbath will end any time soon?

Power, Politics and People

One of my frequent nicknames for President George Bush is "The Flightsuit in Chief". It is not original, I got it from Treadeau's book Talk to the Hand.

But it does convey the sheer arrogance of the man, the Swaggering, Juvenile Chief Executive whose attitude varies from a petulant 4 year old to a college frat boy. He is intellectually incurious, and is unable to string two coherent sentences together on the rare occasions he inclines to discuss policy instead of photo ops (some in the media considered this to be a sign that Bush was increasingly comfortable with the responsibilities of the office after he was appointed in 2001).

Which brings us to the pass week, some 6 years and multiple disasters later (Katrina, Iraq, CIA leak, etc.). The showdown is between the will of Congress to exercise the will of the majority of US Citizens and try and get us out of the Iraq quagmire by 2008. The FSIC says he will veto any spending bill that sets deadlines for withdrawal:

Bush denies isolation from party, public (By Peter Baker)

He strode alone into the Rose Garden and complained that “it has now been 57 days’’ since he asked Congress for more money for the Iraq war and still has not gotten it. For US President George W Bush, the fight over war-spending legislation has become the only talking point – an opportunity, his strategists hope, to demonstrate strength and turn the tables on a Democratic Congress that may be overreaching.

But as he answered questions on Tuesday before heading off for an Easter break, Bush was confronted with another narrative, this one about friends and voters losing faith in his leadership. He is not, he said in response to a question, more “isolated from his own party in Congress’’ than any president of the past half-century, as one conservative columnist wrote. He has not, he said, lost his “gut-level bond with the American public,’’ as the chief strategist of his 2004 campaign wrote.

Instead, Bush presented himself as an unwavering leader trying to avoid the “cauldron of chaos’’ he believes Iraq would become if Democrats succeed in forcing him to withdraw US troops from Iraq. He sees the broader threat that others overlook and will do what needs to be done to defend against it, the president said, even though he knows his path is tormenting the country.

What is it About Democrats that keep normal rules from applying?

A series of recent articles by such concerned trolls like Johnny the Pod Person (hat tip to Crooks and Liars):

ATTORNEYS' FEE
WHY DEMOCRATS WILL PAY FOR THE GONZALES SCANDAL
By John Podhoretz
March 30, 2007

In pursuit of a short-term political benefit, Democrats are in danger of establishing a ruinous new standard in American politics - one they'll come to regret and rue when they take the White House again.

and occasional honest reporters (who knew?) like Goldstein and Eggen:

Prosecutor Posts Go To Bush Insiders
By Amy Goldstein and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 1, 2007; Page A01

About one-third of the nearly four dozen U.S. attorney's jobs that have changed hands since President Bush began his second term have been filled by the White House and the Justice Department with trusted administration insiders.

tie hand in hand with the following from Olbermanns Show Countdown (video only, transcript not yet available). Speaking to Constitutional law Professor Jonathan Turley; Mr. O cuts through the noise and gets to that which must not be named by the Lapdog press:

Olbermann: Does it seem as if most of these scandals surrounding this Administration...have the underling theme of Karl Rove attempting to use the resources of the Federal Government To insure his dream of a permanent Republican Majority?

Turley: Well there is no question that that was what he was planning to do, and had at least one meeting a week for the last seven years to do that. That's the thread that...ties this Justice Department Scandal together...It was a concerted effort to put their people in and SCREW THE DEMOCRATS (emphasis mine).

They broke all precedent and started to bring voter fraud indictments just before the election to make it seem like the Democrats were the corrupt party...almost always in swing states. The prosecutors fired, with only one exception, all came from swing states.

Okay, anyone who does not drink the Koolaid or work for the 500 knows that this is true. Digby and Wolcott have covered it. Hell, the operatives of the Movement Conservatives thought they had achieved it after the D's lost in Nov 2004:

Many wonder what it will take to restore social civility to Washington...Republican Grover Norquist..proffered a solution, telling us that Democrats must accept the finality of their powerlessness.

"...Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate..."

What drives your old Sarge nuts is Republican and Mainstream anger when the Democrats insist on exercising the power they received from winning the election of '06. From Commander Codpiece down to the Con Mouthpieces and their enablers, these crazy bastards think that ANY attempt to restore the rule of law and document an accurate history of the last 6 years is bad. For the good of the Country the Democrats should just ignore all the laws that were broken, the politicizing of ALL areas of government and most significant; the machinations of Rove and his attempts to F*ck them over. Just be content with majority status and let bygones be bygones.

Has the entire planet gone crazy? Maybe IOKIYAR is a physical law rather then an amusing acronym. I mean, no D, I or R actually believes the D's will just let it go. No one is that stupid.

UPDATE I:
Okay I was wrong. The NYT almost makes me believe that:

...Whatever the immediate objective, Mr. Rove seems focused on one overarching goal: creating a permanent Republican majority, even if that means politicizing every aspect of the White House and subverting the governmental functions of the executive branch.

UPDATE II:

Once again WaPO's Johnny the Wise (remember him) repeats the canard that all this investigation is "politically risky":

Democrats To Widen Conflict With Bush

Some on Both Sides See Plans as Risky
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 2, 2007; Page A01

"I suppose there's always a risk of going too far," said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), "but the risk of not going is far greater."

Leon E. Panetta, who was a top White House aide when President Bill Clinton pulled himself off the mat through repeated confrontations with Congress, sees the same risk...Panetta said. "If they go into total confrontation mode on these other things, where they just pass bills and the president vetoes them, that's a recipe for losing seats in the next election."

Committee to Reclaim Americas Principles (CRAP). When the opposition and their lapdogs give you friendly advice to "help you" with the next election, hang on to your wallets. Digby sums up this patronizing Bullsh*t.