Gonzales Perjury Inquiry Coming?

Impeachable offense for the AG? Or yet another domestic spying program being debated? (Both?)

Historic Christian Warriors Save Senate from Diversity

But then are removed and diversity wins anyway.  Ah, well. 

Seriously, for the first time ever, the morning invocation in the Senate was being read by a Hindu Chaplain but not before three “Christian” activists started yelling, crying blasphemy. 

I don’t get it.  They came from North Carolina with the express purpose of disrupting the event.  Did they wake up one morning, hear it was scheduled, and imagine hellfire and brimstone if those damned Hindus got away with this? 

As an American who realizes that shit like this gets broadcast all around the world, I find this embarrassing. 

In my opinion, the self-identified Christians who actually believe they are fighting in a Holy War against other faiths by pulling crap like this aren’t really Christian.  They’re idiots and they’re dangerous. 

Christianity has a pretty wide tent, I think.  But I think these idiots have more in common with terrorists than with most of the well-intentioned people of faith I’ve met. 

Testimony

I predict that the questioning of Sara Taylor will lead us to very few important revelations, that the Bush White House’s view of “confidential communications” will very likely extend over any communications that would be helpful or incriminate anyone in his inner circle, and that Ms. Taylor will voice her support for the President. 

The President has already staked out his ground and dared Congress to move him.  The real question is will the Senate stake out their ground and push him to court. 

Maybe a Vice-Presidential bake sale?

Senate Dems move to cut off funding for the Veep’s office. 

Executive Privilege

The Bush definition has expanded to the point of absurdity.  There are two points here, illustrated by this Washington Post article, which will prove to be decisive, in my opinion. 

One – Executive privilege can be used to prevent someone from being COMPELLED to testify against her will.  Sara Taylor claims that she wants to testify but is being directed not to by the White House.  She no longer works for the administration and presumably nothing about which she would testify is classified.  So there is no legal ground for them to stop her. 

In the current case, Bush today directed his former White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers, and his former political director, Sara M. Taylor, not to testify before the House and Senate judiciary committees this week. Democrats want to question both about their involvement in the firings of federal prosecutors last year that have stirred a furor on Capitol Hill, even among some Republicans.

Bush’s instruction puts Miers and Taylor in an awkward position because, as former officials, they now face the choice of defying the direction of a president they both worked for or risking criminal contempt citations by Congress. Taylor’s attorney, W. Neil Eggleston, complained in a letter to Fielding and congressional chairmen over the weekend that she was willing to testify but was unfairly being put in the middle of “an unseemly tug of war.”

Two – Executive privilege is meant to protect internal deliberations among the president’s closest advisors.  Although there is nothing, to my recollection, in the Constitution specifically recognizing an “executive privilege,” the Supreme Court has widely acknowledged the public interest in recognizing the president’s need to receive frank, unfettered advice.  This, however, does not apply in this case. 

Leahy (D-Vt.) said over the weekend that the White House had no legitimate basis to block testimony by Taylor or Miers. “I haven’t heard anything from Mr. Fielding or anybody else at the White House that would justify a claim of executive privilege,” he said on CNN’s “Late Edition” on Sunday.

He noted that Taylor had sent tens of thousands of email messages on a Republican National Committee account, which means her involvement should not be considered internal advice of the president.

I find it more than mildly amusing that the Bush policy of using RNC e-mail accounts for official White House business (meant to circumvent the preservation of White House papers law) is backfiring.  They cannot claim both executive privilege and avoid the law mandating the preservation of White House documents (including e-mails). 

And, finally, shouldn’t it be obvious to everyone, even the dense mainstream media, that invoking executive privilege, by definition, is a tacit admission of Bush’s involvement in the firing of U.S. attorneys, contrary to the testimony of the Attorney General. 

Driving home listening to the radio…

Radio programming has really gotten bad.  On the drive home today, I was flipping between sports radio and talk radio.  Here are some highlights –

From the John Riggins Show –

Commenting on this article where a golfer in Florida, retrieving a ball hit onto the edge of a pond, was grabbed by an alligator and had to fight it off before being rushed to the hospital. 

“You have to run zig zag if you’re running away from an alligator.”

” Mud is a slippery thing.” 

“Alligators can really accelerate.” 

“You can outrun an alligator.” 

“You can’t outrun an alligator.” 

“Playing dead with an alligator won’t work.  They’ll chomp on you anyway.  It works with bears, though.  But not black bears.  Not if they’re hungry.  They’ll chomp ya.” 

At first I wanted to say a few things about the kind of planet you’d have to think you live on in order to believe advice like this is not only worth hearing but informative.  But I’ll leave it be.  This went on for about ten minutes.  So I thought surely they’re having informed discussion on the liberal talk radio.   But…

From the Thom Hartmann show –

I won’t attempt to quote this one because (1) it would take too long and (2) listening to it again would be unbearable.  But his web-site proclaims Thom to represent “Renaissance Thinking about the Issues of the Day.”  If that’s true, then the Renaissance was overrated. 

He was talking about the bill (H.R. 800) that failed to achieve cloture in the Senate today which would have made it easier to form unions and give employees some protection for supporting a union .  Apparently, there were only 52 Senators in favor of the bill, and not the 60 needed to end debate and avoid the filibuster. 

Thom wondered why the Dems didn’t whine and throw a hissy fit over the filibuster like the Republicans did when they couldn’t get “up-or-down votes” on Bush judicial nominees.  Then his guest opined that the Dems didn’t know how to go for the jugular and they both bemoaned the “fact” that the Dems were awful at winning the big fights, etc.  Thom also said that the only reason he could think of for why the Dems didn’t fight the way the Republicans did was that they weren’t the political tacticians the Republicans were. 

Since I didn’t have pad and paper and I refuse to listen to it again, the above is my best attempt at paraphrasing.  I think it’s pretty faithful.  Having said that…

There is one other reason the Dems didn’t act like five year old children and threaten the nuclear option when they failed to close debate today.  They actually see the wisdom of our Senate debate rules which allows for endless debate and requires a super-majority of 60 votes before closing the floor for a vote.  It protects the minority party. 

There are lots of examples when good bills do not get passed because of the filibuster rule.  But it is a valuable check on the legislative process and is one of the reasons why the Senate is such a valuable institution.  The filibuster encourages debate, discussion, compromise, and the free exchange of ideas. 

Valuing that is not a flaw.  If guys like Thom “the Renaissance Man” Hartmann had his way, and the Democratic Party simply began to mimic Republican tactics and score political debate points for the sake of scoring political debate points, we’d quickly descend to the lowest common denominator in politics.  Some like to say we’re already there.  But I’m not that stupid. 

One other thing Hartmann said also bordered on the moronic.  His guest (whose name escapes me) started talking about Senator Lugar’s speech withdrawing support for the Iraq war and said it was “powerful.”  She talked about grilling Tony Snow about it. 

Hartmann then declared that this was all a part of the Rovian playbook in order to take the Iraq War off the political agenda in time for the elections next year.  Never mind that there is absolutely no reason to believe this, no support from Bush Administration statements, no support from anything Lugar said in his speech today, no support from any action from the White House, or even any credible evidence that Bush or Rove is capable of pulling something like this off.  Just an opinion fueled by the fear of the Rove political machine. 

Sigh.