Pardon Me

FireDogLake has the obvious explanation for why the criminal conspiracy that is the Bush Administration continues to stall Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. It wasn't just the 2004 elections they were worried about. It was a desire to push everything past the 2006 elections so that Bush could grant presidential pardons to Karl Rove and his co-conspirators.

At the rate things are moving, it looks like they will succeed. Nevertheless, the press needs to start asking Bush at every opportunity: "Mr. President, are you going to pardon Karl Rove?" I realize that nothing will stop him from lying (again) but it would be nice to get him on the record.

When Good Dogs Go Bad

Who Are The Real Whores?

A growing scandal -- I know, it's hard to keep up -- in the Republican Party is being reported by numerous media outlets. And who could resist bribery, prostitution, vote-trading and hypocritical public statements? Certainly not the average Republican.

The Wall Street Journal (oh, sweet irony!) was the first to get confirmation of the months-long rumors of Members of Congress being provided free limo rides, free "hospitality" suites, and free prostitutes for the night. Rep. Duke Cinningham (already in jail) is the only Congressman, thus far, who definitely took advantage of this cash-free bribery but others are thought to have been involved, including former Member and now-CIA Director Porter Goss. It is still unclear how many Congressmen were "only" playing poker and drinking free booze, but the FBI is reported to be interviewing whores all over DC -- both the political and the other kind.

Remember when Mayor Marion Barry of Washington, DC was lured into a drug bust by his mistress? His famous exclamation was the "bitch set me up!" I can't wait to hear what this frat pack of Republican politicians sputters as they are frog-marched out of their offices.

Waiting For Daddy

Homemade Video Roundup

Dubya does John Lennon.

What the Easter Bunny Does 364 Days Of The Year.

Do Not Try This At Home.

Amazing Flying Machine

This is really cool. It even has practical applications for search and rescue operations (even more so in warfare and spying, but it's still cool). Swiss researchers have developed a miniature flying machine that weighs less than an ounce and can navigate around obstacles without human guidance.

Funny Bunny

A Good Egg

Easter's annual White House Egg Roll will be open to gay families, apparently because First Lady Laura Bush says so. Maybe this doesn't rank up there with starting a war with Iran, but it still seems like an important admission that times have changed.

The decision of over two hundred gay parents with children to attend the traditional event was a reaction to the Bush-appointed Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling's attacks on the episode of PBS's "Postcards From Buster" that featured lesbian parents as normal and well-adjusted. The national Family Pride Coalition helps organize such events.

Maybe Laura Bush truly is a good egg. That's probably why her poll numbers are so much higher than her husband's.

When Is Theft Not A Crime?

I learned something important recently. Theft is not really theft if it is done by well-educated white boys.

NPR, the L.A. Times and others, I'm sure, all reported on the theft of a two-ton cannon from the campus of Cal Tech in Pasadena, California. Only they didn't refer to it as theft: It was a "prank."

The criminals pranksters from MIT stole hauled away the 130-year old historical artifact using forged cleverly misleading documents to fool security guards.

These future leaders of American industry, along with their snickering sycophants in the mainstream media, think they have pulled off a really cute stunt. In fact, all they have done is steal something that didn't belong to them. Perhaps they thought spending hundreds of dollars on a rental truck and forklift (or did they steal those too?) was a better way to spend money than donating it to charity. Spending days (or weeks?) in planning and executing the crime was time better spent than volunteering at a food bank?

These punks deserve to spend a little time in jail and a lot of money desperately trying to avoid it. If terrorists want to blow up a university campus, they now know it will be easy to drive a U-Haul filled with a fertilizer bomb to the center of campus using forged "work orders." Stealing my car for a "joy ride" is a crime -- even if you leave the car unscratched after you are through "borrowing" it.

A "prank" is painting a mustache on a passed-out-from-jello-shots frat boy. Stealing a valuable heirloom is theft.

It will be interesting to see what sort of punishment MIT's administration dishes out to these students.

NOTE: I know, I know. It's been done before. I don't care. Taking something that belongs to someone else without their permission is stealing. Next question.

Are We Third World Yet?

Is America officially a Third World country now?

Let me count the ways:

• Our government's response to a natural disaster is a second disaster
  

• Our presidency is either inherited, stolen in a crooked election, or both.

• The gap between rich and poor is large and growing

• Wealthy citizens wall themselves off in gated enclaves

• Politically-connected businesses kickback their profits to government officials

• Our national debt is bigger than God and will never be paid back

• Our population is divided along tribal lines
  

• Violence, especially murder, is so common the authorities seem powerless to prevent it

• We are in a war because of the egos of our leaders

OK, I'm going to stop now. This is getting WAY too depressing....

Water Dog

Buh-Bye!

In most of the old Westerns, the bad guy flees just before the Sheriff's posse rides into town. Right on cue, Rep. Tom DeLay announced today that he will resign his seat in Congress.

Obviously, the proximate cause was the guilty plea by DeLay's former henchman, er, deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy. Rudy knows at least some of the illegal operations that DeLay directed from his office. So stay tuned for the second reel of this flick.

ITMFA

Dan Savage has a new web site: ITMFA. In case you didn't know: ITMFA stands for "Impeach The Mother Fucker Already." Gee, I wonder who he wants to be impeached?

Dan is the author of the syndicated advice column "Savage Love." You can buy your own ITMFA lapel pin or coffee mug at Dan's site. Or just make your own, as this enterprising future voter has done.

Censoring Censure

Having watched the Feingold censure hearing, I find myself longing for a modern-day Mark Twain. Someone who can pierce the sanctimonious certainty of fools and knaves as when Twain said, "Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

Only two Democrats cared enough to show up at a hearing that raised the question whether President Bush has ANY constitutional limits on his assertions of power. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Feingold himself. The no-shows were Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, Herb Kohl, Diane Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, and Dick Durbin. Maybe they all had the flu. In contrast, the Republicans showed up in force and uniformly sputtered in outrage that anyone would challenge the president's illegal actions. Arlen Specter, Orrin Hatch, Jeff Sessions, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn all spoke.

Perhaps most interesting was the melt-down of Lindsey Graham, the homespun, "aw shucks" attack dog of the Republican Right. Graham, you may recall, was one of the House managers for the Clinton impeachment. Clinton lied in a civil suit that was brought by GOP activists in an effort to damage him politically and Graham thought that was sufficient for impeachment and removal from office. Meanwhile, Bush lies about illegal wiretaps (as part of a broader cover-up of the program), intentionally misleads Congress and claims unlimited powers without oversight by Court or Congress -- and Graham wants to change the laws to make what Bush did retroactively legal. There's also the little item of lying us into an unecessary war.

In an effort to distinguish Nixon's Watergate from Bush's wiretaps, Graham displayed his historical ignorance by claiming that President Nixon ordered the Watergate break-in. When former Nixon White House counsel John Dean corrected him, pointing out that Nixon didn't know about the burglery in advance, Graham kept trying to rewrite history. As Mark Twain said: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

While it was kind of fun to see Graham lose his cool the bottom line was that most Democrats ducked a fight they could have won. Shameful. Twain also said "Be good and you will be lonesome." Feingold is the loneliest man in the Senate right now.

The Washington Times "Newspaper"

I never read the Washington Times, a "newspaper" owned by "Reverend" Moon, so I may be late to this party. But the front page headline yesterday, "Non-state gays cannot 'marry' " caught my eye. The words "marry" and "marriage" were placed in quotes throughout the article (which was about the disappointing ruling in Massachusetts that bars out-of-state gay and lesbian couples from getting married there if their home state prohibits gay marriage. Oops. I meant "marriage.").

The "reverend" Moon founded the Unification "church" based upon the "fact" that Moon is "superior" to Jesus Christ. In reality, Moon is a criminal and tax fraud who has funneled millions of dollars to conservative causes in the United States. Nevertheless, that has not stopped right-wing "journalists" from toeing the Moonie line on any number of issues of interest to the "Savior, Messiah and King of Kings of all of humanity," aka, Moon. Some of the commentary section pieces are so vile that each copy of the paper should come with a pair of rubber gloves.

Despite the fact that Moon is a loon, ultra-conservatives consider his rag a daily bible. Apparently, his editors are even willing to toss out the style book and pretend that a gay civil marriage is not a "real" marriage.