Bitter Medicine

As I mentioned Frist is livid with the Dems for closing the Senate session. The purported reason: that it was done without consulting him.

Oh dear.

Mean Dems, not giving Frist a chance to shut down debate before it happens, his favorite ploy.

Acting in a partisan manner is status quo fro the current crops of congressional Repubs, where Dems are routinely excluded from any internal bargaining sessions.

Any surprise that Dems are reacting in like manner.

Any surprise that exclusion's bitter medicine tastes particularly bitter to those who so frequently practice it?

More to come.

Breaking: Senate Dems force closed session on intelligence

Frustrated by the continued refusal of the Republican dominated Senate to investigate the lies which misled this country, Senate Democrats have called a closed session focused on forcing the investigation.

Frist is livid of course, good.

The Alito nomination is off the cable news channels, good.

Democrats are showing backbone, very, very good.

No Whitehouse comment as yet.

More to come.

Update 1: Dick Durbin's statement on c-span from BarbinMd at Daily Kos:

It's important because we live in a democracy. It is clear now that the American people were not properly informed before the invasion of Iraq. Intelligence information was distorted and misused, and we've seen as late as last week the lengths to which this administration has gone to to silence and discredit their critics of the misuse of this intelligence information. The Republican congress in general and the senate in particular and specifically the Senate Intelligence Committee has been derelict in its responsibility of oversite over this adminustration.

We have gone to war, we have lost over 2000 of our best and bravest, over 15,000 have been seriously wounded and we are spending over 6 billion a month with no end in sight and this GOP Senate Intelligence Committee refuses to even ask the hard questions about the misinformation and disinformation given to the American peope and the efforts by this administratin to cover it up.The purpose of this closed session in the Senate chamber, a historic session I might add, is to finally give the truth to at least the members of the Senate to finally call to task the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committe, to hold him responsible for finally investigating as he's promised for over a year. [Emphasis min-CK]

Why lie?

Just a couple of thoughts on l'affair Scooter.

Cheney's now former chief of staff, Scooter Libby has, as all now know, been indicted for lying to both FBI investigators and a federal grand jury. The question then asks itself: why lie?

Answer 1: The dumb guy scenario. He didn't lie, he just misremembered. Seriously, this defense strategy has already been floated.

Answer 2: Everybody else except Libby is lying. And while the "everybody else" in this case amounts to a bunch of reporters, still.

Answer 3: He lied to protect himself. This "lone leaker" theory is very popular with those wingnuts still tied enough to reality to admit the ridiculousness of answers 1 and 2.

Answer 4: He lied to protect his boss, Darth Cheney. Let's break this down a bit.

A) Scooter learned of Valerie Plame Wilson's status as a CIA operative from Cheney.
B) After Messieur Plame's, er Wilson's damning NYT op-ed, Scooter discussed strategies on how to deal with the story with the Lord of all evil.
C) THE NEXT DAY Scooter then leaked Ms. Plame Wilson's status to Judy Miller and Matt Cooper. Which, if we're to believe the lone leaker theory, means that the ever loyal Scooter, after strategizing with his beloved boss, decides to go against orders and out Plame.

Yeah, right.

And yet I can somehow hear his words: "Nice little undercover operative wife that bastard Wilson has there. It'd be a shame if anything were to happen to her, wouldn't it Scooter?" Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

Or words to that effect.

And be sure to add a version of the Tom Hagen/Frank Pentangelo conversation from The Godfather II here as well.

"You remember, Scooter, Roman history don't you? If a flunky took a fall for the Emperor he and his family were set for life, big chunks of Halliburton stock, er Italian villas were given. Plus of course George's, er the Emperor's full pardon as well. A good deal, right Scooter?"

Or words to that effect.

The REAL Scandal This Week

By jillian posting at DailyKos:

*Food Insecurity in America.*
While the country is glued to the media regarding Traitorgate, the Republicans voted to basically let fellow Americans go hungry. Welcome to the "Let them eat cake if they can find it" era that is dawning in America today.

On a party-line vote, a Republican-run U.S. House of Representatives committee voted to cut food stamps by $844 million on Friday, just hours after a new government report showed more Americans are struggling to put food on the table.

About 300,000 Americans would lose benefits due to tighter eligibility rules for food stamps, the major U.S. antihunger program, under the House plan. The cuts would be part of $3.7 billion pared from Agriculture Department programs over five years as part of government-wide spending reductions.

"This is not a giveaway program that results in windfall profits," said North Carolina Democrat G.K. Butterfield in opposing the cuts. "That is not moral. That is not American."

Antihunger activists said hunger rates were up for the fifth year in a row, so the cuts were a mistake.

"It is hard to imagine any congressional action that is more detached from reality," said James Weill of the Food Research and Action Center.

"Cutting food stamps now is a scandal," said David Beckman of Bread for the World, pointing to losses from hurricanes.

Approved 25-20, the committee package now will become part of an omnibus budget-cutting bill. - reuters

and why do they want people to go hungry? They want their buddies to make money off human tragedy.

House and Senate negotiators working on a $100 billion agriculture spending bill voted on Tuesday to allow states to privatize the food stamp program, which helps 25 million people put food on the table monthly - reuters

Our nation is facing insecurity...food insecurity...

The number of Americans experiencing food insecurity has been on the rise for five straight years with an 11.9 percent increase in 2004 compared to 2003. Rates of hunger and food insecurity increased in nearly all areas of the nation, and single female- headed households with children continued to have substantially higher rates of food insecurity than all other household types. Furthermore, the study shows the number of people living in food insecure households with hunger rose from 3.5 percent in 2003 to 3.9 percent in 2004-accounting for 4.4 million households, including 274,000 households with children. - Americas Second Harvest

and isn't this ironic....

Texas leads nation in rate of households at risk for hunger

**Update**
This food stamp cutting is really a "good" way to "support our troops" (NOT!)

Military families on food stamps? It's not an urban myth. About 25,000 families of servicemen and women are eligible, and this may be an underestimate, since the most recent Defense Department report on the financial condition of the armed forces--from 1999--found that 40 percent of lower-ranking soldiers face "substantial financial difficulties." Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, reports hearing from constituents that the Army now includes applications for food stamps in its orientation packet for new recruits.

Yep, that's the GOP, balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.

One down, how many to go?

So, the power supply went out on my desktop today. Anything interesting happen while I replaced it?

Oh that.

I, as did the rest of the blogosphere, tuned in today to watch Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference announcing the indictment of Darth Cheney's Grand Moff Scooter Libby. And though disappointed that he hasn't nailed Rove, yet, I was impressed by the thoroughness of his indictment of Libby as well as the way he handled the announcement. Very Jack Webb just the facts-ish, though with a surprising touch of humor.

I was most impressed though by the passion he showed when countering the Republican spin machine's canard that perjury and obstruction charges are mere "technicalities".

And more important than his passion, he laid out exactly why such charges are so serious: lying about a potential offence makes investigation of that offence nearly impossible. Thus the fallacy behind the spin is exposed. Failure to indict on the original charge, in this case the exposure of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, is no weakness on the prosecuter's part, when the potential perpetrator of that act, Scooter Libby, lied so as to make ascertaining the truth impossible.

One question that comes to mind is why Scooter didn't take the fifth, as is his contitutional right. My guess is based on the timing of the FBI and grand jury interviews which you'll recall took place prior to the 2004 election.

My supposition is that Scooter's, at very least, a good soldier and took one for the team at a time when it would have been perhaps fatally embarrasing for a top BushCorp™ flunky to imply complicity in an act of treason.

And while we ponder might have beens, did you note that Fitzgerald said that the reason he couldn't bring indictments in 2004 was largely because of his inability to obtain Cooper's and Miller's testimony? Did then these two reporters enable Bush's re-election by delaying their testimony until after the election? That sems to be the obvious result.

Speaking of dear Judy, I was happy that Fitzgerald clearly explained his reasoning for subpoenaing the two reporters: that in this case their were only two witnesses to the crime: the person leaking Plame's identity, and the reporter to whom her identity was leaked. Failing to get the reporter's testimony would mean relying solely on that of the leaker. And as is self-evident in Libby's case, such testimony leaves much to be desired.

Questions remain of course.

Already there is speculation that Rove is the mysterious "Official A" of the indictment.

And who, exactly was Novak's 2nd source?

And finally, the big question, one that Fitzgerald will apparently never answer, as he sees it as outside his mandate, precisely how self-aware were Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. when they sold us the Iraqi war based on a series of suppostions about nukes and WMD that were clearly wrong?

It's manifestly obvious that a Congressional investigation is order. And unless I'm much mistaken, it will take the election of a Democratic congress in 2006 to get one.

"That's what I said, what you gonna do about it?"

When you read a lead like this, what do you think?

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iran's new president has repeated a remark from a former ayatollah that Israel should be "wiped out from the map," insisting that a new series of attacks will destroy the Jewish state, and lashing out at Muslim countries and leaders that acknowledge Israel.

If you're a BushCorp™ True Believer©, your first thought may be that this is exactly why we need to continue the war in Iraq. With crazies like this running around it's vital that we fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here.

If you're a member the the reality based community your thoughts might be different.

First you might realize that, because of the US' continuing failed venture in Iraq, our enemies are daily emboldened by the evident limitations of US military power. With every carbomb and IED explosion, the limits of just what can be done by the greatest military power the world has ever known becomes clearer.

And further, with our military already overburdened, villains the world over, from Iran to North Korea can breath easier, knowing that a battalion of marines will be far from forthcoming.

And if you're an Iranian Islamo-fascist leader, your position is especially excellent. Every US "success" (e.g. the destruction of a purported insurgent cell) solidifies your policies over that of more moderate, secular political rivals. What, did you think demagogic calls to fight for God and country only work over here?

The Iraq war also serves as a useful destination for the hot-blooded young, under-employed males of your country. Better they fight the great satan in nextdoor Iraq, than foment opposition to your medieval government in Iran.

And further, even actual US success (i.e. establishing democratic rule in Iraq) works to your benefit as well. For if Iraq sees true democratic rule, that rule is going to have a distinctly shi'ite flavor, especially in those provinces on your south western border.

So, if you're a hard-line Iranian shi'ite leader your position vis à vis the US incursion into Iraq is truly win/win. And you can continue to mouth your outrageous blather and build up your nuclear facilities with impunity.

It's not like the US is in any position to do anything about it.

What's a little torture between friends?

No one who's paid attention to typical BushCorp™ modus operandi should be shocked that Darth Cheney is hip deep in the Valerie Plame scandal. From the AP:

While it is not against the law for three high-level officials to discuss the identity of a CIA agent, the conversation is part of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of whether crimes were committed when Plame's name was leaked to journalists.

The New York Times, quoting unidentified lawyers involved in the case, said Libby's notes differed from his grand jury testimony. Libby reportedly told grand jurors he learned Plame's name from reporters.

There is nothing in the public record to suggest that Cheney, like perhaps Libby and deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove, pointed reporters toward the CIA official in conversations about her husband, diplomat Joe Wilson.

But the investigation has lifted the veil on the White House's brass-knuckle political culture — and Cheney's role in it.

The latest disclosure also raises fresh questions about the vice president's credibility, long-ago frayed by inaccurate or questionable statements on
Iraq.

But really, what's a little public lying from someone who's also in favor of torture? From today's WaPo:

VICE PRESIDENT Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. "Cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture. [Emphasis mine-CK]

As the Post notes, such an official stance is both unprecedented at this level of government, as well as indefensible. Fortunately the senate is, for once, not buying:

This summer Mr. Cheney told several Republican senators that President Bush would veto the annual defense spending bill if it contained language prohibiting the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by any U.S. personnel.

The senators ignored Mr. Cheney's threats, and the amendment, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), passed this month by a vote of 90 to 9. So now Mr. Cheney is trying to persuade members of a House-Senate conference committee to adopt language that would not just nullify the McCain amendment but would formally adopt cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as a legal instrument of U.S. policy. The Senate's earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a betrayal of American values. As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture.

And should Bush choose to excersize the threatened, though rarely used (by him) presidential veto he will join his veep in further ignominy.

Y2K?

Why 2k?

From CNN:

U.S. military death toll in Iraq reaches 2,000

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The war in Iraq saw two milestones Tuesday that reflect the country's path toward democracy and its human toll as officials said the referendum on a draft constitution passed and the number of U.S. military deaths reached 2,000.

A cynic would suggest that the announcement of the referendum result was held to co-incide, and so try to mitigate, the death toll landmark.

In a further co-incidence, not noted by the CNN report, Darth Cheney may now be implicated in the effort to discredit WMD truth-teller Joe Wilson.

Dan Froomkin on the NYT report:

The New York Times this morning reports that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby apparently first learned that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA agent from none other than his boss -- Vice President Cheney.

This new revelation suggests that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity has reached even closer to the vice president than was previously known.

It is no great leap to speculate that Mr. Cheney shared this info with Scooter in order to help co-ordinate a typical BushCorp style ad hominem attack on Mr. Wilson.

And while. as the Times story stresses, a discussion of classified information between a veep and his CoS is not illegal, I must point out that if it's with the intent to commit a crime (say exposing an undercover CIA agent for example) it certainly is criminal, and in this particular case, treeasonous. And further, if Darth or Scooter lied to federal prosecuter Fitzgerald about their communications regarding Wilson and Plame, they may be guilty of obstruction and/or perjury regardless.

Stay tuned, Fitzmas is expected any day now.

The wisdom of Kay Bailey Hutchison

Now, lest you think from my earlier post, that Senator Hutchison is just all about defending Republican treason, let me point out she has sometimes expressed wiser views.

From, of all people, Alec Baldwin quoting KBH at Huffingtonpost:

"I do not hold the view of our Constitution that there must be an actual, indictable crime in order for an act of a public officer to be impeachable. It is clear to this Senator that there are, indeed, circumstances, short of a felony criminal offense, that would justify the removal of a public officer from office, including the President of the United States. Manifest injury to the Office of the President, to our Nation and to the American people and gross abuse of trust and of public office clearly can reach the level of intensity that would justify the impeachment and removal of a leader."

Sure, her words were spoken in 1999 and were referring to president Clinton, but am I wrong to believe that her words ring even truer today with a president whose indiscretions have led to war and death rather than a stain on a dress?

Mr. Leaker and Mrs. Wilson. A picture story

Having trouble getting your head around the Valerie Plame story? Here's a helpful picture story from fouro over at DailyKos.

GOP spin in defense of treason

As BushCorp™ loyalists nervously await the indictments almost certain to be handed down by the Plamegate grand jury, they're also trying out their spin cycles on how to put the best face on treason.

The latest is from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, on Meet the Press:

Senator Hutchison said she hoped "that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."

1) Just to pick nits, the cost of Fitzgerald's investigation has been an astonishingly low (by DC standards) $723,000 (compare with $52 million for the Ken Starr investigations of Clinton), and
2) "Perjury technicality"?! Jeez. Now perhaps in Texas lying to and obstructing federal investigators is the status quo, a time honored way to keep away from them gol durn revenooers. (In fact, given BushCorp™'s heavy Texas contingent, that would explain a lot). But I suspect, even for most folks in Texas, such behavior isn't actually acceptible.

Not even if you move to Washington.

One of the most despicable things about BushCorp™ lies and corruption is the "everybody does it" spin seems plausible.

Writing at cbsnews.com, Sportsline.com columnist Lloyd Garver makes an excellent suggestion:

Yet it seems that all these crimes are considered "business as usual" in American politics. And that's the outrage. The people we trust our government to should have a higher standard of ethics, not a lower one. If someone we've given power to lies, cheats, or steals, it's unforgivable.

Is this just the nature of the beast? Is it like complaining about the weather? Maybe not. I've got one suggestion that might help. It's time we pressure the lawmakers to have stronger penalties for those in power who commit crimes. Politicians are always calling for stiffer laws, so how could they not approve of this idea? Let's just double the fines and sentences for crimes that public officials commit. If perjury is a two-year offense for you or me, make it a four-year offense for a Congressman. If misappropriation of funds can get the average Joe 10 years, it should get the average Senator Joe 20. And make them serve their sentences in jails surrounded by prisoners whom they represented.

And while Mr. Garver's suggestion may never come to fruition, there is one penalty we the people can excercize: any pol who uses the everyone does it dodge needs to be sentenced out of office forthwith.

The failure of the welfare state?

I'm not exactly sure which neurons allow this, but it's an incredible conservative feat: the ability to carefully and thoughtfully examine the facts of a situation and then draw the precisely wrong conclusion. Of course it helps if you only examine some of the facts and ignore others.

Today's case in point is today's WaPo op-ed from George Will on GM's recent agreement with the UAW reducing GM's healthcare coverage for workers.

The place where George (can I call you George?) and I agree is that health care has become an enormous, unwelcome burden on American business.

If you're a conservative you then perceive that the GM/UAW agreement is therefore a death knell for that favorite Republican bugbear, the dreaded welfare state, or er, um, in this case, welfare company.

Yes, its true, due to the outrageous cost of healthcare in the US, companies like GM are being forced to give up the ungodly practice of paying for comprehensive healthcare for its employees.

And why do they have to do this? George has the answer, citing President of failed former GM subdivision Delphi Robert "Steve" Miller as his source (and who better I might ask than a failed chief executive?):

"He calculates that a competitive American industrial compensation cost is about $20 an hour. And to get to a total compensation cost of $20, including health care, retirement and workers' compensation, 'which is high in the states we are in like New York, Ohio and Michigan,' you have to have a basic hourly wage of $10. Pay at Delphi's plants in China is roughly $3 an hour."

Ah yes, that low cost bogeyman China. How do they do it? It's funny, but the conservative capitalists who love to use Chinese labor costs in their analysis of overpriced American labor always seem to omit one tiny little detail: China is a communist country that pays for all its citizens healthcare so that its businesses don't have to.

Does Mr. Will, via Mr. Miller believe this is the way the US should go? Apparently not:

“Herb Stein, the University of Chicago economist who served as chairman of President Richard Nixon's Council of Economic Advisers, famously said: If something cannot go on forever, it won't. Delphi's resort to bankruptcy and GM's attempt, with the cooperation of the UAW, to avoid, for now, doing that, suggest that America's welfare state -- its private sector as well as its public-sector components -- is reaching its Herb Stein Moment.”

Ah but if we’re going to go quoting the redoubtable Mr. Klein I prefer this:

“Capitalism survived its crisis and went on to great successes. But the capitalism that survived and succeeded was not the capitalism of 1929.”
--Herbert Stein, The Triumph of the Adaptive Society, 1989

And while Mr. Will and his ilk may wish for us to return to depression era capitalism, wiser souls recognize this as folly.

Without the social contract created by New Deal policies whether private or public, the type of capitalism Mr. Will espouses may well devolve into chaos as the divisions between haves and have-nots widens.

Or perhaps Mr. Will is just trying to sew the seeds of revolution?

[Correction: As Dave Schuler points out China does not provide medical coverage, and in fact, its healthcare insurance system is even less effective than the US'. For an interesting view of China's healthcare systems go here.}

Texas Court Issues Arrest Warrant for DeLay

Don't ya love that headline? From WaPo:

A Texas court today issued an arrest warrant for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), the powerful former House majority leader, ordering him to appear for booking at a county jail in his home district.

The court in Travis County, Tex., set bail for DeLay at $10,000, and a lawyer for the embattled congressman said it would be posted.

Dick DeGuerin, the lead counsel on DeLay's defense team, said the arrest warrant was "a matter of routine," the Associated Press reported.

However, the defense reportedly had hoped to avoid submitting DeLay, formerly the second-ranking Republican leader in the House, to the fingerprinting and mug shot photography that accompanies a formal arrest.

You know you're in trouble if the best thing the guys on your side can say is that your arrest is a matter of routine.

I mean sure, arrest warrants are routine for gang-bangers and mafiosi, but for Congressmen?

On the other hand, given the current Republican leadership's level of hubris and corruption, perhaps it will become so.

Stop me if you've heard this one before

Here's the headline:

Hurricane Wilma grows into most intense Atlantic storm ever

Here's the story:

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras – Hurricane Wilma wobbled toward Mexico's Cancun resort and Florida on Wednesday, an "extremely dangerous" storm that has already killed 12 people in the Caribbean and was labeled the most intense ever to form in the Americas.

Do I even need to point out the obvious?

Fitzmas greetings!

With potential indictments just days or hours away for BushCorp™ officials for outing undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, or, more likely, conpiracy and obstruction of justice charges in the case, its tough avoiding a sever case of premature schadenfreude.

Happily Georgia10 blogging at DailyKos has some helpful suggestions for dealing with pre-Fitzmas anxiety. Read all about it here.

BushCorp™ nominee on record against abortion rights

After all the nod-nod, wink-wink going on between BushCorp™ and the religious right about SCOTUS nominee Harriet Miers' evangelical street-cred, the other shoe has finally dropped: proof of her oppostition to abortion rights and Roe v. Wade, from the WaPo:

Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers once pledged that she would "actively support" a constitutional amendment banning abortions except to save a mother's life, participate in antiabortion rallies, and try to block the flow of public money to clinics and organizations that help women obtain the procedure.

Those 1989 written promises to an antiabortion group, made as she was campaigning for a seat on the Dallas City Council, came to light in documents that Miers delivered to the Senate yesterday. They emerged one day after she assured two senators that no one knows how she would vote on Roe v. Wade , the landmark case that legalized abortion nationwide.

This revelation should surprise no-one who's been paying attention. From religious right kingmaker James Dobson's assurances, to Bush's clumsy pronuncements about the importance of her religion to her suitablility, Miers has clearly been chosen for her anti-choice proclivities by an administration that doesn't want to admit it's doing just that.

Well that's all over now. The only question remaining is how this will play out in Senate confirmation hearings. John Roberts got a pass on the abortion question because the lack of any specific record on the subject.

The irony here is that Miers, like Roberts, was likely chosen specifically because she lacked the judicial paper trail so damning to BushCorp™ appointees afraid of their own records.

So now the question stands as this: is Harriet Miers the staunch anti-abortionist she portrayed herself to be when running for a seat on the Dallas city council, or was she merely pandering to the religious right in order to get elected?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Bush/Cheney can be questioned in Plame civil suit

Just a little thought to make you smile a bitter little smile.

In a Bloomberg article exploring the possibility that Darth Cheney himself might be a subject of the Plamegate investigation, reporter Richard Keil closes his story with this little side-note:

In an interview yesterday, [former ambassador Joe] Wilson said that once the criminal questions are settled, he and his wife [Valerie Plame Wilson] may file a civil lawsuit against Bush, Cheney and others seeking damages for the alleged harm done to Plame's career.

If they do so, the current state of the law makes it likely that the suit will be allowed to proceed -- and Bush and Cheney will face questioning under oath -- while they are in office. The reason for that is a unanimous 1997 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that Paula Jones' sexual harassment suit against then- President Clinton could go forward immediately, a decision that was hailed by conservatives at the time. [Emphasis mine]

Yep, just file this one under the be careful what you ask for column. And stay tuned, given the increasingly apparent corruption of BushCorp and friends™, I expect many further ironies are in the offing.

Rise of the RSC

From the Washington Post:

[T]he Republican Study Committee, or RSC -- has gained the upper hand because of DeLay's criminal indictment in Texas, widespread criticism of the Republicans' handling of Hurricane Katrina, and uncertainty over the future of the leadership, according to lawmakers and aides.

Now, cutting the budget -- which only months ago seemed far from possible -- is at the center of the agenda in the House.

The return of Republican fiscal conservatives, ya gotta love it, seriously.

Sure, being Republicans and all, the RSC wants to move towards a balanced budget by cutting assistance to those among us least able to do without such assistance, the poor and the sick. And sure fiscal sanity might be more equitably be acheived by eliminating Bush's tax cuts for the top .01% of the wealthiest among us, or by scrapping the most pork laden transportation bill in history, or by cancelling the tax credit payoffs to the mega-rich energy companies. And lets us not forget the $5 billion/ month being poured into the sand in Iraq or a US military budget that rivals spending by the rest of the world combined as possible areas for cuts.

I mean these people are Republicans after all.

Still, at least these folks recognize the insanity of BushCorp™ borrow and spend policy: its destabilizing potential for the global economy, it's incredible callousness towards our children and grandchildren whose responsibility it will be to pay off the costs of Bush's follies.

And happily for Democrats, now that Republicans are beginning to show themselves as just that, we can have a real debate over how to regain fiscal sanity, a goal to which the Bushies have never, apparently, aspired.

Proposition 77 Update

It's been noted elswhere that the Democratic party, and most notably House majority leader Nancy Pelosi are against propostition 77, the California re-districting measure. What this tells me is that the Democratic party, as it currently stands, is still tied to the corrupt status quo, and gives further evidence as to exactly why re-districting is so important. Happily, true roots reform Democrats do understand why this measure, flaws and all, is so necessary. Per Kos:

I'm filling out my absentee ballot, and I've been trying to find a reason to vote no on 77, Arnold's effort to create a non-partisan redistricting process in California. And I can't think of any. I'm not sure why busting the current incumbent-protection racket would be a bad thing, why creating competitive districts and forcing incumbents to be more responsive to their constituents than the current 70-80 percent partisan districts require.

More on proposition 77 here.

So many scandals, so little time

It's exhausting, keeping up with Republican diableries these days, what's a lowly CaliBlogger to do?

I mean there's Plamegate, with Rove, Libby and even possibly Cheney implicated. There are new rounds of subpoenas for Frist and DeLay. There's Abramoff and Safavian. Et alia, et alia ad infinitum, or so it sometimes seems.

And that doesn't even include the regular old political stuff like BushCorp™'s continuing assault on the environment, normal evil-doing stuff like that.

Helpfully, today's WaPo gives a nice little round up of the most egregious stuff:

With Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove returning to a grand jury as early as today, associates said the architect of Bush's presidency has been preoccupied with his legal troubles, a diversion that some say contributed to the troubled handling of Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court. White House officials are privately bracing for the possibility that Rove or other officials could be indicted in the next two weeks.

Bush's main partners on Capitol Hill likewise are spending time defending themselves as the president's legislative initiatives founder. The indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) for alleged campaign funding illegalities has thrown Republicans into one of the most tumultuous periods of their 11-year reign and created the prospect of a leadership battle. And while Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) deals with a subpoena in an insider-trading investigation, a bipartisan majority rebuked Bush over torture policies.

Most of the scandals have little direct connection with one another, but their accumulation in a compressed period has challenged a White House already beset by political problems stemming from the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and high gasoline prices, according to Republican advisers close to the Bush team, several of whom said they could speak candidly only if they were not identified by name.
...
Beyond the short-term problems, Republicans are particularly anxious about the sprawling investigations of conservative lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose business and political dealings regularly brought him into contact with dozens of lawmakers and top White House officials. Among insiders, he was one of the most familiar faces among the generation of operatives and lobbyists who came of age when Republicans took control of Congress after the 1994 elections.

"The one that people are most worried about is Abramoff because it seems to have such long tentacles," said former congressman Vin Weber (R-Minn.), a lobbyist with close ties to the White House. "This seems to be something that could spread almost anywhere . . . and that has a lot of people worried."

The Abramoff scandal has already resulted in two unanticipated casualties: David H. Safavian, a former Rove business partner serving as the top White House procurement official, recently resigned and was arrested on charges that he lied about and impeded an investigation into his dealings with Abramoff. And Timothy E. Flanigan, Bush's nominee for deputy attorney general, the number two job at the Justice Department, withdrew last week after questions were raised about his interactions with the lobbyist.

"The Abramoff thing is a lingering nuisance to everybody," said GOP lobbyist Charles Black. "I don't know who else might be caught up in it."

Twin investigations of Abramoff by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and a multi-agency federal task force appear likely to tar a host of lawmakers the White House has relied on for passage of critical legislative initiatives. At the same time, the House ethics committee, which has been essentially shut down over a staffing dispute, is expected to get back in business and look into allegations against DeLay and nearly a dozen other lawmakers, Democrats included. This is where the Abramoff and unrelated investigations could start to merge.

House Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), a DeLay ally, is facing questions about ties to Abramoff, including his participation in a golf outing in Scotland that the lobbyist organized in 2002. And Rove allies have also been entangled in the Abramoff investigation. One is Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition leader who has struggled during a campaign for lieutenant governor of Georgia to shake off suggestions that he received Indian gambling money to mount a lobbying effort against rival casinos.

Some would conclude that BushCorp™ is just suffering secondtermitis, but I find it hard to believe that 2nd terms are somehow mystically jinxed.

Instead I prefer the formulation of an especially gifted elder Republican, Abraham Lincoln:

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

BushCorp™ has been fooling some people for years, but his pious phrases and posturing are faltering, even with some of his most devoted advocates.

Will there come a time when George W. Bush isn't fooling anybody?