News Musings

A few quick things I have to comment on. Newt Gingrich feels the personal lives of 2008 Presidential hopefuls shouldn’t be an issue during the campaign. How nice for him. What about hypocrisy? That’s not a personal life choice, it’s a matter of integrity. I propose a new rule: If you devoted your life to destroying someone over an extramarital affair with an intern… all the while conducting your own affair with an intern (to which he has admitted), you have pretty much destroyed any concept of integrity you had. Move along, there’s no White House in your future.

Chuck Hagel of Nebraska has just lost some of my interest. On the one hand, he strikes me as one of the few ’08 possibles who seems to not have checked his integrity at the Senate door when he arrived, but he was also one of only two Senators who didn’t feel it was appropriate for the Senate to strip out of the Patriot Act the horrible provision that was slipped in there a while back which essentially allowed the White House to circumvent Congressional approval of federal attorneys, by removing the requirement for oversight of “interim” appointments as well as changing the definition of “interim” to be as long as the White House desires. I am not a fan of altering the fundamental balance of power between the branches of our government. That slipped-in passage in the Patriot Act attempted to do so. Correcting that is definitely the right thing to do. (If anyone can tell me what justification he and Chris Bond of Missouri had for voting “nay”, I want to know. I’ve been unable to find a public statement on it.)

Finally, no link here, but I just want to comment on the continued hubris of the President. A President to whom “by partisanship” refers to “everyone does what I say and agrees about it”, and “compromise” means “I’ll give you some of what you’re asking for if you agree to make it meaningless.” What a crock, the White House “compromise” on the testimony of various White House staff before Congress was this: We’ll let you talk to them, if it’s not under oath, off the record, and you promise not to recall them for further interviews”. Essentially, “allow them to lie with impunity, don’t record the conversation so it’s only your word against theirs if you catch them lying, and then promise we’ll be done with the whole matter”.

What gall, from a White House that continues to demonstrate a willful disregard for the truth. Just today it is reported that among the 3000 pages of e-mails and other documents released to the investigation into the attorney firing scandal, there is a gap of over two weeks, from November 15, 2006 till December 2, 2006, the two weeks just prior to the actual firings, and the dates that most likely contain any evidence that might exist of improper political motives for the firings. Ah well, less than two more years left until this long national nightmare is over and we can start trying to repair the damage.

Liam.