Nevada resident Margaret Frye-Jackman, 71, was diagnosed in August with ovarian cancer. She had two rounds of chemotherapy at University Medical Center, the only public hospital in the Las Vegas area.

Soon after, she and her daughter heard the news on TV: The hospital’s outpatient oncology services were closing because of state Medicaid cuts. Treatment for Frye-Jackman and hundreds of other cancer patients was eliminated.

You got that? Public services for urgent medical care are being cut … and still the GOP fiddles and argues for tax cuts. If ever there were a group of more amoral, corrupt, soulless bunch of shitheads outside of collapse-of-Rome, I just can’t imagine.

Four forensic pathologists agree that Larry Swearingen, set to be executed Tuesday, could not have committed the 1998 murder that sent him to death row.

The four include the medical examiner whose testimony helped secure Swearingen’s guilty verdict. That medical examiner now says college student Melissa Trotter’s curiously preserved body could not have lain in the East Texas woods for more than 14 days — and probably was there for a much shorter time.

The results mean Swearingen was in jail when the 19-year-old’s body was left behind, the pathologists say.

At the least there is significant objective doubt as to whether or not Swearingen could have committed this murder. All attempts to have the courts review this evidence or reconsider have fallen upon deaf ears. It is now down to appeals to mercy from a hangin’ Republican in order to extinguish all options.

Update: Fed court intervenes, grants appeal, execution is stayed. Fantastic!

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) easily won a vote to remain chairman of a key committee today and will stay in the Democratic caucus despite his high-profile criticism of President-elect Barack Obama and his support of Sen. John McCain during the presidential campaign.

To recap: Lieberman actively campaigns against the Democratic president, up to and including implications that he may be a terrorist, undermines the last Democratic president at every turn, is defeated in the Democratic primary and runs on an “independent” ticket, and is the #1 supporter of Bush on the “Democratic” side. Lieberman is also the head of one of the most important Senate committees around (Homeland Security), where he has yet to conduct a single investigation or question the administration.

Democrats win both houses of Congress and the Presidency in a landslide and do not need Lieberman’s vote.

Do the Democrats kick him from the Committee chair? Do they refuse to let him caucus with them?

No.

Lieberman retains everything.

Jesus fuck, Dems, can you possibly be any more of a collection of wimps? He actively attempted to destroy your party.

Lesson to be learned: senators hate the Left and outsiders far more than they hate being stabbed in the back.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give for an actual party with some balls and the ability to enact progressive legislation.

Just fucking shameful.

Also: fuck you, Democrats. We expect that from the GOP, but you guys? Screwed the pooch. I want my Constitution back!

Now I want a McCain edition. Just show the Grim Reaper, that’ll be best.

To be clear: the above is clearly satire… it’s just poorly done, unfunny, and unimaginative. You know, like the typical dreck you find in the excruciatingly unentertaining New Yorker.

Update:

I’ll give the nutters at NatRev $50 if they run a similar cover.

To actually be analytical, though, Horsey gets it wrong as well even in his satirical response. For example, Osama is the enemy of all Americans, hero to none; Cheney is the enemy of thinking Americans, but hero to many. Not to mention that the counter response to the Obama outrage always, always ignores the actual and continuing impact of race and gender and the tyranny of the dominant class upon the marginalized groups. Anyway, enough of the critical thinking, fuck the New Yorker for being a bunch of socially rigid ponces.

Update: Here’s how it’s done.

Update: Vanity Fair responds

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of “combined” interrogation techniques — using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time — on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The fact that these people are still (mostly) running our government instead of being behind bars is probably the most accurate snapshot, and indictment, of our country today. Ruled by a clutch of undemocratic totalitarians, the America I grew up with is gone and our moral authority with it.

A collision with a semi-trailer truck seven years ago left 52-year-old Deborah Shank permanently brain-damaged and in a wheelchair. Her husband, Jim, and three sons found a small source of solace: a $700,000 accident settlement from the trucking company involved. After legal fees and other expenses, the remaining $417,000 was put in a special trust. It was to be used for Mrs. Shanks care.

Instead, all of it is now slated to go to Mrs. Shanks former employer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Two years ago, the retail giants health plan sued the Shanks for the $470,000 it had spent on her medical care. A federal judge ruled last year in Wal-Marts favor, backed by an appeals-court decision in August. Now, her family has to rely on Medicaid and Mrs. Shanks social-security payments to keep up her round-the-clock care.

Oh wait, it gets better

In August last year, U.S. district judge Lewis Blanton sided with Wal-Mart, ruling that when Mrs. Shank signed on to Wal-Mart’s health plan she was obligated to abide by its terms.

The ruling came six days before the Shanks’ 18-year-old son, Jeremy, was killed in September last year in Iraq shortly after he arrived in the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division.

If ever there was an entity that deserved strychnine in its reservoir, Wal-Mart would be the one.

Olberman has more

Now implement some goddamn national health insurance for fuck’s sake.

Hillary Clinton spent the night in the White House on the day her husband had oral sex with Monica Lewinsky, and may have actually been in the White House when it happened, according to records of her schedule released today by the National Archives.

Excuse me? Relevance? Is there a single iota of meaning or worth behind this story? Does it serve any purpose at all? This is taking the recent attack-on-the-Democratic-(but not St. Johnny McCain’s!!!)-surrogates ridiculousness to a whole new level. Apparently, you don’t even need to be a sentient being any longer in order for the corporate media to whip your existence into something for which one of the Dem candidates must “repudiate” or “reject.”

Ladies and gents, your “liberal” media at work.

Have you no sense of decency ABC? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Ralph Nader has formed a presidential exploratory committee, and said in an interview Wednesday that he will launch another presidential bid if he’s convinced he can raise enough money to appear on the vast majority of state ballots this fall.

Look, you narcissistic oblivious prick, you are part of the problem.

Here’s an idea, instead of reappearing every four years to throw elections for the biggest authoritarian kleptocracy in history like a bad case of gonorrhea… why don’t you do something useful during the intervening four years of nothing? Al Gore got an Oscar, what did you do? Besides charge five figure speaker fees for resting on your laurels, that is.

Because of you, thousands have died in Iraq. Because of you, our civil liberties have been eroded probably for the remainder of my lifetime.

I dunno, why don’t you form an actual progressive third party and build up the roots nationwide between elections. I know it’s hard work and I know you hate hard work, especially when you’re not getting press. Sometimes we all must make sacrifices.

Stop being a useful idiot and just be useful. Please.

Jose Padilla, once accused of plotting with al Qaeda to blow up a radioactive “dirty bomb,” was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years and four months on terrorism conspiracy charges that don’t mention those initial allegations.

Padilla, an American citizen, was taken on U.S. soil (with Ashcroft holding a press conference to announce the grab of the dirty bomber), held without charges for 3.5 years,¹ in solitary confinement, denied access to an attorney, and tortured.² I’ve mentioned this before.

Without even going to the elements of what appears on the surface to be a Thought Crime more than an actual crime, there is no conceivable way by which this trial could be imagined to have been fair or Padilla’s civil rights upheld. Any one of the elements above would be sufficient in a system still beholden to the rule of law to create a mistrial; taken together the are a nightmare of coercion, duress, and authoritarianism.

This verdict is a black eye on the Department of Justice, the prosecuting attorneys who did not resign rather than try this case, the judge, the judicial system, the media, the Bush administration, and America.

Just fucking embarrassing.

I’m sure my shame and anger will comfort the now-physically and mentally broken Padilla while he’s in solitary confinement and on suicide watch for the next 17 years.

The Bush administration and the DoJ forwarded an argument in this case, and one that has apparently stood, that the President has the power to declare anyone – even a United States citizen – to be an enemy combatant and outside the jurisdiction of our system of laws. Again, I’ve talked about this before. Gentle reader, from the results of this case, you too could be deemed an enemy combatant. At any time. In any place.

I hope you like Uzbekistan. Or at least windowless rooms in hot climates. I also hope you aren’t too attached to your fingernails, skull, or skin.

Note: unlike John Cole, I don’t think this sentence is a rebuke to the Bush government. To reach that stage, you first have to accept the Bush-DoJ interpretation of enemy combatant and that this was a fair trial. A real rebuke would have dismissed the case. This is just mealy halfassed reasonableness by the judge.

House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) revealed that the White House failed to preserve emails for at least 473 separate days. Waxman’s report said “Vice President Cheney’s office showed no electronic messages on 16 occasions from September 2003 to May 2005.” Among the sixteen days for which email are missing from Vice President Cheney’s office “is Sept. 30, 2003, the same day the day the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced they were investigating who outed former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.”

INT. office – night

We revolve around a classic, quality desk largely cleared of papers. It’s dark wood exudes power and solidity. A single lamp spotlights the desktop and the two liver-spotted hands lightly touching at the fingertips. CHENEY, the man behind the hands, is in shadow. He may or may not be undead. Thunder BOOMS outside and rain DRUMS on the windows. The phone RINGS.

cheney

The data we provided to Congress is incomplete you say? And the missing days just happen to align with my Energy Task Force and the Plame records?

(beat)

My, that is unfortunate.

(beat)

How could that have ever happened?

CUT TO:

Close up of a severe, old, possibly dead man’s eyes. Which are behind glasses. We slowly pan back until we can see all of CHENEY’S face. A corner of one side of his mouth curls up. CHENEY winks. The lamp CLICKS off.

END

Remember, this is the group that permanently deleted the pre-Iraq email backups. The group (especially Rove) that used RNC mail servers for official government business and then deleted those emails when subpoenaed. All of this is in violation of the Federal Records Act and we’re not even into conspiracy to obstruct justice territory or the substance of the underlying crimes yet.

And Congress apparently still thinks “impeachment” is a new cocktail from Georgia.

The White House has acknowledged recycling its backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003, raising the possibility that many electronic messages — including those pertaining to the CIA leak case — have been taped over and are gone forever.

The disclosure came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it has previously refused to provide.

Among the e-mails that could be lost are messages swapped by any White House officials involved in discussions about leaking a CIA officer’s identity to reporters.

Note that this, in addition to, you know, hiding the crimes, is almost certainly in violation of the Federal Records Act. To be in compliance with the FRA, records may only be destroyed under the authority of a records disposition schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States.

NARA issues a General Records Schedule (GRS) that gives record descriptions of records that are common to most Federal agencies and authorizes record disposals for temporary records. The Department is responsible for developing agency record schedules-with the approval of the Archivist of the United States-that are tailored to our own agency-specific records that are not provided for in the GRS.

Record schedules are mandatory instructions of what to do with records (and nonrecord materials) no longer needed for current Government business. The records schedules indicate how long a document must be kept before it is transferred to a Federal Records Center, destroyed or transferred to NARA for permanent preservation.

Now, gentle Congresscritters, who is going to be the first to query the record schedules to see if these documents were on the list? Who is going to be the first to issue a subpoena? Who is going to be the first to mention “criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice”?

I’m going with “no one,” but they should. Not only did Congress let the administration get away with rampant lawbreaking for 7 years… they’re going to let them destroy the evidence while they sit around and have bullshit investigations about fucking steroids in a sport?!? Jesus fuck that makes me want to find the nearest protruding object and run into it full force with my eyeball.

The sad part is, I remember when this behavior by the Busheviks used to surprise me.

How voters interpret Sen. Hillary Clinton’s composure – emotional, cold or just plain tough -could be a deciding factor in her campaign for the presidency, political analysts told ABCNEWS.com.

Earlier today at a campaign event in New Hampshire, Clinton’s voice broke and her eyes welled up with tears as she spoke to 16 undecided voters about her passion for the election as well as for the country.

You see, she can’t win. If she’s strong and businesslike, then she’s a frigid bitch. If she’s actually emotional, then she’s a crazy bitch (you know how wimmin are!). The Cligina never stood a chance. I give it about -30 minutes before one of the denizens of right blogistan declares that the display of emotion was a calculated move.

For a man, this would be OK (and a classic example of leveraging dominant stereotypes against type to your benefit) because he would be showing his compassion. For a woman in our narrative, there’s no benefit in either direction (see also: how the media treats those who were right about Iraq).

It’s a sad, sad state of affairs and an embarrassment for our country that our sexism and misogyny is so ingrained that this is our level of discourse. Jesus fuck, even Pakistan has had a female Prime Minister (sure she’s dead now and was a corrupt nepotist when alive, but she still had two X chromosomes. Reportedly. I haven’t checked).¹

It’s not like I have any love for Clinton or a desire for her to be president – she’s a warmongering centrist carpetbagger with little to offer over the status quo, but I dislike and ridicule her her on policy, not gender, grounds (just in the past couple of days, she’s baselessly called Obama weak on choice and fearmongered with the best of the Busheviks)

Also, fuck you, Edwards.

“I think what we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are tough business, but being president of the United States is also tough business,” Edwards told reporters Laconia, New Hampshire.

While anything can be a political, there are far, far classier ways to address this issue. You know, like ones where you don’t come across as callous and sexist. Like, oh, how Obama handled it.

“I didn’t see what happened,” he said, but added, “I know this process is a grind. So that’s not something I care to comment on.”

Score one for wooooo!bama

* Unless it’s not the end and only the beginning. What do you think I am, a pundit?

Side note: “Jesus fuck” is my new favorite expression of exasperation

In a noble attempt to warm up reporters on caucus eve, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton made a surprise jaunt onto the press bus on Wednesday morning, bearing coffee and bagels. “It’s been a long campaign,” she said, standing at the front of the bus. “I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s been a great experience.” Dumbfounded by the appearance (her first and only on board the bus since she started campaigning almost exactly a year earlier), the traveling press corps watched in silence as she handed off the goods to Phil Singer, her spokesman, making a rare appearance on the press bus himself. Clinton then turned and left.

Just to restate: a/the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination steps onto the press bus, bringing gifts and yummies and the press, the defenders of our freedom and bringers of light into the darkness of untruthiness … sat mute. Not a single question. Just the cold shoulder.

Now, imagine if the bagels n’ coffee were brought by McCain. Or Bush ’00. Do you think the collected media would have shrugged, took the vittles, and given the cold shoulder? Me neither.

Looking at the current results, Obama wins (unfortunately, that pandering choda scrubber; remember it’s his back yard and got both traitor Kucinich and Mrs. Grumpy fav Richardson to back him as their delegates second choice), Edwards looks strong (he was outspent by more than 5:1 by Obama and Hillary – look at the pretty graphs!), finishes in second, Hillary looks like toast. She’s dead in the water, it’s just a matter of time now. Media + unfavorables == dead in the water. I don’t see Obama getting derailed, but my fingers are crossed.

Huckabee creams the pathetic GOP crop and sends party aparatchiks into conniption fits, Romney’s toast and McCain looks unelectable (he’s in 4th behind the animated corpse known as Thompson, though they’re going to argue that he didn’t “try” for the state. Then again, neither did Thompson). I think watching the GOP and faux news go into apoplexy is the highlight of my week.

In other news: fuck Iowa and New Hampshire. That these two, tiny, unrepresentative states hold such large sway over our presidency is absolutely ridiculous. Rural, white, and provincial… yeah, exactly the dominant characteristics I want determining my country’s leader.

The media’s coverage is absurd as well. Hillary’s 30% is a repudiation, but McCain’s 88% rejection percentage is a huge victory!!!1!!! (Chris Matthews). Iowa’s super important… unless it isn’t… which it isn’t when we’re talking to Giuliani, but is when we’re leading into a commercial break. Fuck you, corporate media. Now bring me some male enhancement ads.

It’s not that Sears fails to notify users it intends to spy on them. Indeed, the email sent to users states that the application “monitors all of the internet behavior that occurs on the computer on which you install the application, including…filling a shopping basket, completing an application form, or checking your…personal financial or health information.”

The rub is that this unusually frank warning comes on page 10 of a 54-page privacy statement that is 2,971 words long. Edelman, who is a frequent critic of spyware companies, said the Sears document fails to meet standards established by the Federal Trade Commission when it settled with Direct Revenue and Zango over the lack of disclosure about the extent of their snoopware.

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

…

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Now you know why impeachment is off the table. All their hands are dirty.

The answer: impeach them all.1

1 Yes, yes, you can’t “impeach” members of the Senate or House. You can, however, expel them.

Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.

In the interests of keeping the end goal clear, language has been used interchangeably in this here post. Deal.

NBC late night host Carson Daly, who today announced that he is returning to the air in the face of the ongoing writers strike, wants his friends and family to help with his scab efforts. In an e-mail, Daly asked a small group of contacts to call in “suggested jokes” to a telephone hotline, noting that he would “play some, most, or all of your jokes on the air.”

I hope you’re enjoying your last few moments on a worthless show with crap ratings, scab.

So far… I’ve got nothin’.

Absent large scale collective action we, the People, have lost any voice in the direction of our country. Even “our” side is absolutely worthless – the Democrats have done nothing but further the imperialist, disgusting, nation-destroying agenda of the Republican administration. They’ve backed down from every fight, they’ve condemned MoveOn.org, they’ve continued unrestricted funding for our adventure in Iraq all for no purpose. A huge majority in this country is on the side they are supposed to be representing, and they’ve abandoned us. Whether because of cowardice, cooption, or political calculation that the lefties aren’t going to vote GOP so they should take votes from the right (which isn’t going to happen). Let me rephrase, whehter because of cowardice, cooption, or stupidity is of no matter to me. The Democrats have failed we, the People, and we have no one left to turn to except each other. And we cannot collectivize – They own the government, They own the media, and They have the money.

It’s depressing and it makes me spitting mad.

Now, the latest from the megalomaniacal Cheney administration is ramping up to attack Iran. He’s wanted to do this for a long time (he’s so delusional, I would not be surprised if he was suffering from late-term syphillitic corruption), but the military brass was against it sufficiently to make it only a low-likelihood option, though real nonetheless. In the past couple weeks, things have changed: the Lieberman-Kyl amendment (to which Hilary fucking Clinton voted aye) is the equivalent of the Iraq war resolution on Iran passed last week. Then a Senate resolution designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization passed. And now, today, Sy Hersh reveals that the Navy brass (in particular) is on board, the strategy has changed from ‘invade’ to ‘surgical strikes’, and the PR campaign is ramping up.

This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

Make no mistake, we attack Iran and we are fucked. Our troops in Iraq will be waging Khe Sanh on a nationwide scale, isolated, alone, and attacked in a fashion that is going to chew up our military. Dien Bien Phu will look like a logistical success compared to the meatgrinder our troops are going to be in. Plus, Iran has far more power globally than Iraq did. If we attack them unprovoked, expect them to bring the war here (I’m sure the irony will be lost, yet again, on the Caligulistas in charge). The attacks here will remove all vestiges of the Constitution to which we still cling and we will be living in an outright police state. Less safe and more warlike with every passing day.

I used to think we had about 50 years until the end of the American hegemony, maybe 70. The signs of our collapse were there from the time of Nixon, but it was a slow decline. I would like to thank the Cheney administration for acting as the catalyst that has reduced that number to approximately 0. Their foreign policy combined with their fiscal policy has already put us past the point of no return in terms of our dominance. We’re approximately a hairsbreadth away from cementing the timeline as “yesterday.”

There is no suffering sufficient for what the members of the Cheney administration deserve. There is no forgiveness for any of us either. I hope I meet Cheney in hell so I can pull him further down his impaling stake. It still would not be enough.

The results show that in paper after paper, state after state, and region after region, conservative syndicated columnists get more space than their progressive counterparts. As Editor & Publisher paraphrased one syndicate executive noting, “U.S. dailies run more conservative than liberal columns, but some are willing to consider liberal voices.”

The Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office arrested activists Mark and Deborah Kuhn in West Asheville Wednesday morning after a complaint that the couple was desecrating an American flag. They say a deputy invaded their home and used excessive force.

If you think this is an isolated example of this behavior, I’ve got a nice bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Samuel Walker saw combat in Iraq firsthand: He was splattered with human flesh and shrapnel in a dining hall when a suicide bomber blew himself up just a few feet away.

When Walker got back to the U.S., he brought some of the battlefield home with him. He heard phantom screams in broad daylight, smelled gunpowder that wasn’t there. A loud noise would send him into a defensive crouch. He’d been eating French fries in the mess hall at the time of the blast, and the sight of a McDonald’s restaurant now brought back violent memories.

Two doctors diagnosed Walker with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, directly related to his close encounters with violence in Iraq.

But Walker was not a combat soldier. He was a civilian recreation supervisor for KBR, the largest contractor in Iraq. And instead of getting the medical and counseling help he sought, Walker, a U.S. Army veteran, found himself caught in a morass of red tape and rejected insurance claims.

I post this for a few reasons including, inter alia, our country’s inability to treat mental illnesses as illnesses, the ridiculousness of our so-called “health-care system”, my interest in (and prediction that) the major systemic healthcare burden for our veterans (contactors included) is going to become increasingly psychology-focused rather than physicality-focused as field medical technology and other protective war tech preserves people’s bodies but leaves our minds as exposed as they’ve always been, and that the government has essentially been paying for Huguenots, but refuses to acknowledge them as such (no VA for you, buddy!)

That may be a record for longest run-on in the history of this blog. Probably.

Mr. Bowles, an Ohio inmate, challenged his conviction in federal district court and lost. The court told Mr. Bowles that he had until Feb. 27 to appeal. He filed the appeal on Feb. 26, and was ready to argue why he was wrongly convicted. But it turned out the district court made a mistake. The appeal should have been filed by Feb. 24.

The Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, in a majority opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, that Mr. Bowles was out of luck, and his appeal was invalid. So much for heeding a federal judge.

A special shout out to the cowardly Dems who were “keeping their powders dry” when they chose not to fight first Roberts then scAlito.

Media analysts are casting the Democrats’ decision to pass an Iraq spending bill without a pullout provision as a win for the White House. MSNBC’s Hardball, for example, said “after weeks of refusing to back down to the White House, today Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did just that.” NBC Nightly News reported, “The Democrats will argue they took a tough stand here, but the reality is that facing a veto threat, they backed off.” USA Today describes the Democrats as “flinching,” the New York Times calls “the decision to back down” a “wrenching reversal for leading Democrats,” and the Washington Times titles its front-page story “Democrats Capitulate On War Funds.”

You were elected in 2006 to end the war. Over 2/3rds of the American populace wants us out and out ASAP. Bush’s support is under 30%, and this is what you do? You capitulate on a nonnegotiable item to a weak Caligula and a weaker congress.

The only against you right now are Caligula, his enablers, and the media. If you can’t stand up to the opposition party and the idiotsphere, then you don’t deserve to be in Congress.

Poorly played, Dems, poorly played. You now own this war just as much as the GOP. You fucking cowardly idiots.

Some view the spiraling attacks as a strand in a worrisome pattern. At least one former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran. “They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for,” says Hillary Mann, the administration’s former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs. U.S. officials insist they have no intention of provoking or otherwise starting a war with Iran, and they were also quick to deny any link to Sharafi’s kidnapping. But the fact remains that the longstanding war of words between Washington and Tehran is edging toward something more dangerous. A second Navy carrier group is steaming toward the Persian Gulf, and NEWSWEEK has learned that a third carrier will likely follow. Iran shot off a few missiles in those same tense waters last week, in a highly publicized test. With Americans and Iranians jousting on the chaotic battleground of Iraq, the chances of a small incident’s spiraling into a crisis are higher than they’ve been in years.

Yeah, we’re totally not attacking Iran. Totally. And we’re definitely not going to do a massive airstrike on ginned up excuses, using nuclear “bunker buster” bombs.

The Bush administration has postponed plans to offer public details of its charges of Iranian meddling inside Iraq amid internal divisions over the strength of the evidence, U.S. officials said.

Am I dreaming or does no one else in the media remember 2002? Jebus on a stick, we’re stuck in an endless loop of idiocy and evil perpetuated by the administration and abetted by the media and spineless Dems.

For the Dem examples, two of the announced 2008 presidential candidates – both of whom voted in favor of the Iraq resolution – apparently learned nothing from the worst foreign policy blunder in our nation’s history, the administration’s mendacity, or the 2006 election results. To whit: both Clinton and Edwards have come out and essentially said that war is a viable option with regards to Iran.

War is an option now.
War is an option now when every shred of evidence indicates that Iran is ten years or more away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.
War is an option now despite what is going on in front of our very eyes in Iraq.

Here’s Clinton:

“U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons,” the Democrat told a crowd of Israel supporters. “In dealing with this threat … no option can be taken off the table.”

Here’s Edwards:

Iran must know that the world won’t back down. The recent UN resolution ordering Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium was not enough. We need meaningful political and economic sanctions. We have muddled along for far too long. To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table, Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table.

Make no mistake, we all know exactly what they mean by no option: a preventive strike on Iran by US forces. That’s the stated presidential philosophy, that’s what our options are: do nothing or attack.

Here’s my message to both of you: you’re not getting my support now, let alone my vote. Attacking Iran is a mistake of monumental proportions. In addition to the illegality of it. In addition to the inhumanity, immorality, and cowardice of an attack, it will result in the death of thousands of our troops in Iraq and in the Gulf and make us a pariah state on the scale of a late-80s South Africa or an anytime Israel.

If we let this happen, we have all failed, but none so much as those with a voice and the power to derail this train who instead add coal to the furnace.