PSoTD

Another arrest in the British peerage case, this time Lord Levy. A short synopsis of the case so far:

The police are investigating whether peerages have been offered in exchange for donations and loans to political parties after it was revealed at the beginning of last year that all three major parties were given secret loans before the last general election. Traditionally there is no wrongdoing in lending political parties money however the suspicion is that the lenders are trying to buy influence.

Tony Blair has been accused of selling peerages after four businessmen, who gave Labour 4.5m in unpublicised loans, were subsequently nominated for peerages. Labour went on to reveal it had been secretly loaned nearly 14m ahead of the last election. The Conservative Party revealed they had borrowed 16m from 13 wealthy backers and the Liberal Democrat party 50,000 from three backers.

So he starts today with a spray of... something.

I know I said I wasn't interested in January 2007 polls on the Democratic primary, but this one is a little different...

Joe Biden's Campaign
When Will Joe Biden Officially End His '07-08' Campaign for President?	Before March 2007 Before June 2007 Before October 2007 Before January 2008 Before April 2008 Not Until The Convention Are You Crazy? He's Going to Win This Thing!
	Current Results

The TPM Cafe roundtable with Senator Schumer didn't work as well as I would have hoped. Two days to develop questions, 40 minutes for Senator Schumer to type out his responses - he answered 7, and a couple of those were in the "of course we should" quality. I'm not sure live blog discussions work that well if the time for response is so limited and the time to develop questions is this long.

Having said that, it sure seemed to me that TPMCafe could use their "rating" option to determine a priority of questions to be asked. There were several good questions asked that weren't answered, and I'm not just talking about my own question. Room for improvement on the process, I guess.

Chuck Schumer is starting to make me really wonder what his whole point is with his book. At first, I thought he was a policy stalking horse for Hillary Clinton, laying out some ideas, hearing the feedback, and allowing Clinton to clean up on what sells. He supports her candidacy, so why not be a good scout? And then there's the need to feed some sort of Senatorial egomania, it's not like Schumer doesn't have 99 other compatriots in that department. But this Bailey thing. I watched him a bit on Tavis Smiley tonight, and Schumer went out of his way to explain the jobs of the fictional Baileys, and their life. It's kinda weird. It occurs to me that maybe Schumer ought to quit ignoring that inner voice, and write that damn screenplay about the Baileys.

Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was euthanized this morning at Kennett Square.

“We just reached a point where it was going to be difficult for him to go on without pain,” co-owner Roy Jackson said. “It was the right decision, it was the right thing to do. We said all along if there was a situation where it would become more difficult for him then it would be time.”

Even with the finest care available on the planet, Barbaro could not be saved. No expense was spared yet still the best veterinary doctors in the world failed. A petulant refusal by Barbaro's owners to admit failure would have only caused the horse to suffer towards no good end.

Compare the President of the United States who would countenance the pain, suffering and deaths of thousands rather than admit to failure. Just as the best medical care and intentions of all concerned couldn't save a champion thoroughbred with a shattered leg, the best military in the world can't be expected to reassemble a shattered Iraqi society. All possible outcomes are not within our control. But Bush's retort is to chant over and over and over "Failure is not an option", no matter how clear it becomes that failure is the right option.

Rest in peace, Barbaro. Suffer no more.

He discourages Americans.

Senator Chuck Schumer needs to quit wearing them. Then he needs to quit talking about what he sees in the future - because it bears no responsible relationship to reality. From today's Meet the Press:

SEN. SCHUMER: Well, I think the bottom line is that the president will have no choice but to begin a withdrawal come this summer or fall of 2007. And that’s why I think the 2008 election, Tim, is going to turn on a positive platform. That’s what I’ve written...

MR. RUSSERT: Not Iraq.

SEN. SCHUMER: Not Iraq. I think we do have to discuss how to deal with the war on terror in the future. But I think that the president has shown so little veering from this plan, which is a disaster, that by 2000--early 2008, even he is going to be forced to withdraw troops from Iraq.

Relying on Bush to withdraw troops is not a plan. Expecting him to do so without major pushing by Americans is not realistic. It's much more likely that we'll still be there, just outside of Baghdad, trying to keep the civil war in Baghdad and Iraq from spreading to other countries. Iraq isn't going away as an issue in 2008, although it is likely to be seen as part of a bigger issue - Middle East politics. Not necessarily the issue of terrorism, but actual foreign policy.

Seven states (at least) have it in place.

I really don't know very much about this guy, but at least Alaska can say they've had a primary candidate for President now.

Kerry had his chance. I voted for him in 2004 and wanted him to win, but since that didn't occur, I am ready for other candidates. I'm not sure he has much weight to throw towards any particular candidate but it will be curious as to who he chooses to support, if any, in the primary. The Massachusetts primary will be March 4th, 2008, and unfortunately the race could well be over by that date, so I suppose there's a chance Kerry won't have to declare a preference.

According to Vice President Dick Cheney, it's the number three man in Al Qaeda!

We have not gotten Osama bin Laden, obviously, because he's very careful and, say, he doesn't communicate and he's not sort of in direct contact on a regular basis. But we've taken out several times that whole layer of leadership underneath Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri. One of the most dangerous jobs in the world is to be number three in the al Qaeda organization, because a lot of them are now dead or in custody.

Hey Dick, could we make the most dangerous job in the world being Al Qaeda's top guy?

The reviews are in on last night's SOTU from the style mavens at the National Review's conservative coffee klatsch. Not much on Bush but K-Lo found Nancy Pelosi's suit "unexpected and classy" and noted she had to change earlier in the day due to a chocolate mishap. Meanwhile, J-Go was simply appalled by Jim Webb's coiffure! Eewwww!

You go, girls.

Poor Gary Locke, perhaps to be forever remembered as the standard of lame-ass wuss responses to the State of the Union Message.

I don't pity John McCain, but it's pretty easy to recognize the trap he now finds himself in as a future Presidential candidate. For years he has cultivated a "maverick Senator" reputation, although it's really quite difficult to see how he really earned it. And after losing to Bush in the primaries in 2000, he was set to be the milquetoast "anti-Bush" for the party. He'd support the President, even on bad ideas, as long as they were ideas that were identified as Bush's. Where he could find a way to differentiate his position from the President without appearing to really badmouth Bush, he would do so, presenting himself as the Republican that wouldn't do what Bush was doing, exactly, but would do what Bush was doing with Tweak A and New Paint Job B and Twist of Phrase C. All the while, he was looking at 2008, realizing that Bush could screw things up a bit, but his clever positioning would allow him to cast himself as the candidate that actually could accomplish what Bush tried to do - that it was a question of intelligence and execution for the policy, and not a question of a particular policy in itself.

And that's where McCain made his first mistake - thinking Bush couldn't fuck it up so bad for any Republican that visibly followed his lead. But Bush has failed that badly. I don't see any way that a Bush toadie can win the Presidential election in 2008. I don't see any way that John McCain can avoid being painted as a Bush toadie, in both the primaries and the general election. Just as Lieberman was trapped with the kiss, McCain has "the hug". There are now potential Republican primary candidates that have positioned themselves further away from Bush than McCain has, limiting McCain's wiggle room. And prominent Republican Senators as well. And Bush has now adopted the "McCain Plan of Escalation" with his own Tweak A and Paint Job B and Twist of Phrase C. McCain finds himself utterly, completely screwed by being seen as so close to Bush on the Iraq policy. He's stuck, with no future political choice but to let this play out and hope for a miracle.

Most of us do hope for a miracle, but at some point reality must be the premise of policy. There will be no miracle for McCain. His presidential aspirations are just another victim of George W. Bush, who finds a way to taint anything near him. McCain got too close to Bush, which would be ironic for a "maverick" if indeed McCain had ever been one.

I know that campaign web sites want to keep it casual, but Pets for Hillary?

I think a primary campaign based on the power of money, the inevitability of result, and the attacking of opponents is doomed to failure. Maybe not in the primary, but definitely as a general election result. Campaigns that are pissing people off in January 2007 for their tactics are going to face the wrath of bloggers for two years.

20 U.S. service members killed in Iraq in a day. What will it take for those who support the surge to realize their folly? What does Joe Lieberman say if one of the Congressional delegation that visits Iraq eventually gets killed? Go nuclear?

America has already spoken about this. Bush has picked his failure - will Congress allow him to pursuit it - again?

I'm pretty sure that if the California primary date is moved up, that may be one of the biggest political stories of 2008 - but I don't know how. Here's what some other bloggers think as well, but I fully expect the real story is an unknown one as of yet, one of those law of unintended consequences things...

Hotline on Call

Earlier this week, I made an argument that the Dem race for the WH could last well past Feb. 5, the date most conventional wisdom worshipers are predicting will be the last day of the primary season. While I stand by the idea that the Clinton v. Obama race could turn into a delegate-for-delegate slugfest, the likelihood of Feb. 5 ending things does rise sharply if California moves up.

California Uber Alles

Gender and race are less likely to be an obvious issue in California than they are elsewhere. Particularly the South. This would seem to benefit both Hillary and Obama. Although, to be honest, my time spent living in NorCal makes me think that this will not help Hillary nearly as much as everyone thinks. I don't exactly know how to explain this, but she is just so not California.

News from Me

I just read an item about how the California presidential primary may get moved way up, maybe becoming the second or third in the land. That might bode well for Hillary Clinton grabbing the Democratic nomination. With the right kind of campaign — and Bill stumping for her — she might do well enough in this state to make her unstoppable.

Political Animal

And since Hillary's announcement is the big news today, it's probably worth mentioning that this would be pretty helpful to her cause, right? Not only is she pretty popular among the fundraising set here, but she's one of the few candidates with enough money to seriously contest California and still run decent campaigns in the other early states.

At least, that's my initial reaction. Am I missing something obvious?

He's probably the best candidate the GOP has for the 2008 general Presidential election, but I have no idea what his chances might be of surviving their primary process.

Catherine McLin has guts. Good for her.

So how long until Starbucks opens up a store in Nuuk, Greenland?

Because I smell development and population growth in Greenland. It'll probably even be pitched as one of the real benefits of global warming.

Stupid, stupid, stupid campaign move.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton last night ripped into 2008 White House contender John Edwards - her first direct assault on any of her potential Democratic presidential rivals.

Clinton's surprising broadside came just hours after Edwards, in Harlem, delivered a sharp condemnation - clearly aimed at Clinton, although he didn't mention her by name - against those who fail to "speak out" against the war in Iraq.

"Silence is betrayal, and I believe it is a betrayal not to speak out against the escalation of the war in Iraq," Edwards told a crowd at Manhattan's Riverside Church, where Martin Luther King had declared his opposition to the Vietnam War.

"If you're in Congress and you know that this war is going in the wrong direction . . . it is no longer OK to study your options and keep your own private counsel," he said.

"Silence is betrayal. Speak out and stop this escalation now."

Edwards' hit on the front-runner for the Democratic nomination was not lost on the Clinton camp, which sees criticism from the Iraq war opponents as one of the major threats to her expected campaign for the presidential nomination.

"In 2004, John Edwards used to constantly brag about running a positive campaign. Today, he has unfortunately chosen to open his campaign with political attacks on Democrats who are fighting the Bush administration's Iraq policy," said Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson.

Edwards gave good advice. Quit keeping your private counsel and oppose the escalation of the war - if that's what you believe. He didn't say Clinton's name. He didn't say Lieberman's name. He basically said it's no value to be quiet. And Hillary takes offense to that - and says that Edwards is attacking Democrats that are fighting the Bush Administration's Iraq policy? Is this panic, already, in her campaign? She's not the issue. Edwards isn't the issue. The Bush policy is the issue.

Wolfson's statement is just so craven. And yet, so feeble and pathetic. It just adds to my doubts about her candidacy.

So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs. But let me say to you tonight that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.

Martin Luther King, April 3, 1968

It's that time of year where I wonder why more labor organizations don't spend more effort online honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. As the AFSCME web site says, Dr. King was a staunch supporter of worker rights. American Federation of Teachers recognizes this, also. Remembering King's labor-related efforts seems like a valuable thing for labor organizations to do, both in honoring the past and looking forward to the future.

I am offended. Don't your profanity guidelines apply to Fox Sports?

Not being a brain-dead partisan ideologue, I felt a responsibility to look into the charges of hypocrisy leveled this week at Nancy Pelosi over selective implementation of the new minimum wage standard. The accusations centered on potential favoritism to the tuna canning industry in American Samoa. The best overview I found was in a diary by blogger dday over at Daily Kos.

The important points:

1. American Samoa was already exempt from the U.S. mainland minimum wage. The wage floors for various sectors in Samoa are set by a review board appointed by the US Department of Labor. The minimum wage for the Samoan fish canning industry is currently set at 3.26 an hour. The Republican gripe centered on the fact that the new legislation extended full minimum wage coverage to the former Abramoff-client Northern Marianas Islands - which previously had no wage floors at all - while leaving Samoa untouched. The Republicans want a similar review board set-up in the Marianas.

2. The legislation was generated by House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) not Speaker Pelosi. This doesn't necessarily mean she didn't have input into it but I don't find the argument that she was bought off by Starkist compelling. How many corporations have connections to San Francisco?

3. There are legitimate concerns about the impact of raising the minimum wage on the tuna industry which employs 40 percent of the Samoan workforce.

4. Pelosi aides have now said the committee would be asked to work toward having all territories use the same wage standard.

Occasional missteps by the Democratic Congress are inevitable. The important thing is that policy is openly debated and adjusted as necessary in a timely fashion. This debate is a good step in that direction. The Republican culture of corruption, back rooms and favoritism cannot be allowed to again be institutionalized.

Six more years of him. America suffers.

Bush Breaks 150-Year History of Higher U.S. Taxes in Wartime

It was once considered Americans' patriotic duty: enduring extraordinary tax increases in wartime to help finance the fight.

Not today. Iraq is the only major U.S. conflict, except for the 1846-48 Mexican-American War, in which citizens haven't been asked to make a special financial sacrifice. President George W. Bush opposes tax increases, even as the costs escalate far beyond predictions and he calls for more troops.

``It's a reflection of either a lack of public support for the war or perhaps an unwillingness of the Bush administration'' to test its popularity, said Elliot Brownlee, an economic historian retired from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Bush administration, which says any tax increase would harm the economy, is financing the Iraq conflict with borrowed money. That spares policy makers and pro-war politicians from riling voters already soured on the war.

Bush is ruining this nation. Period.

Okay, what's the likelihood there's a wink wink nudge nudge going on here about civil war...

“The government has told the Sadrists: ‘If we want to build a state we have no other choice but to attack armed groups,”' said the legislator, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the prime minister.

Bush warned that the U.S. expected al-Maliki to keep those promises.

“America's commitment is not open-ended,” Bush said. “If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people.”

Al-Maliki on Saturday announced that his government would implement a new security plan for Baghdad, which consists of neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweeps by Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops.

In the past, the Iraqi government has tried to prevent American military operations against the Mahdi Army, while giving U.S. forces a free hand against Sunni militants. The Bush administration has pushed al-Maliki, who took office in May, to curb his militia allies or allow U.S. troops to do the job.

Although al-Maliki withdrew political protection from the Mahdi Army, there was no guarantee the Shiite fighters would be easily routed from the large and growing area of Baghdad under their control.

So... Bush tells al-Maliki to have the Shiite fights stop fighting and let the U.S. "search" their areas. There's no real demilitarizing required. There's no substantial disarming, really. If al-Maliki and the Shiites can keep it quiet for just a little while, the U.S. will declare victory and leave, and once we do, al-Maliki would be free to watch over the Shiite destruction of the Sunnis. So just keep it quiet for a bit.

That's a very cynical viewpoint, and I bet it's the viewpoint out of the White House. There's two big ifs: if the Shiites can be patient enough to wait for the U.S. to leave, and if the Sunnis are going to wait to be annihilated.

Would pretty much take away the whole "we can't leave now, they're on the brink of civil war" argument, since if we leave then it will be civil war as well.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki speaking to the Wall Street Journal on January 2, 2007:

"I didn't want to take this position ... I wish I could be done with it even before the end of this term"

U.S. President G.W. Bush speaking to a Congressional delegation on January 11, 2007:

“I said to Maliki this has to work or you’re out,”

Final word goes to retired U.S. Military Intelligence officer Pat Lang:

"Because of the rich Bushian fantasy life it will be demanded in the New Plan that Maliki distance himself, and indeed fight, if necessary, to disarm and render impotent Shia Arab militias. He is INCAPABLE OF DOING THAT!! He is one of the Shia Arab leaders. His role in history is to empower the Shia Arabs and to consolidate their power over the Sunni Arabs. Was that clear enough?"

In addition to the inability to say anything particularly believable as achievable last night, George W. Bush looked scared during his national presentation. So says Fineman.

I've been looking at some of the comments of people around the nation. One thing is clear: many Americans are still on the denial stage in the seven steps of grief. Comments such as these:

`We have to succeed. We must succeed. The consequences of failure are catastrophic in the region.'

--Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

`I'm convinced the military can handle it and we'll be successful.'

--Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

`Freedom must prevail in Iraq. The president has charted a course for victory, and I look forward to supporting this new strategy.'

--Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.)

`I applaud the president for rejecting the fatalism of failure and pursuing a new course to achieve success in Iraq.'

--Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.)

are based on a conceptual expectation that the facts are not promoting. They cannot face up to the adult facts that America has allowed Bush to create a disaster from which we cannot fix militarily, nor can we fix quickly. Supporting whatever the President wanted to do - which is basically what these men have done all along - is how we got here. At some point we all have to realize that the situation is terminal. A growing percentage of Americans have made that determination. The political tipping point is near in America. American will not accept this war much longer as it is going. Period. A real escalation (as opposed to this PR version) is not acceptable. Period. These four men quoted above will be amongst the last to realize this, and the time has come to quit listening to them, along with the Commander in Chief who has failed us by volunteering America into a war without a clear, achievable and acceptable exit objective.

That's my Over/Under on how many times the Preznit will mention Osama Bin Laden tonight. (Remember him?)

Place your bets!

The administration keeps pushing these things they're going to be doing along with the escalation: renewed political and economic efforts in Iraq, creating a time frame of the mission, etc.

This has been the job of the President from day 1. It has been his responsibility, since committing America to this effort, to do all that is possible to keep it to a minimum. It has not been acceptable for him to have taken an approach that was hands-off. It was not acceptable for him to not be "second-guessing his commanders". It was not acceptable for him to be "passive about questioning the advice of his military advisers". He was committing us. It deserved as much attention as he could have given it, as much energy as he could devote to it, including questioning everything.

We're now here - trapped in a mess of his making - and all of a sudden Republicans are claiming that the zebra is changing his stripes. Bush is hands on. He's engaged. He's disagreeing with his own hand-chosen experts. He's second-guessing.

I don't buy it. He's just glommed onto new experts, but I believe it's the same old tale of the incurious president, the passive decider. He's not deciding what we do as much as who we have tell us what we are going to do. He's not Presidenting. He's Chairmaning.

I believe Lindsay Graham has been accidentally honest about what is going on.

It seems clear to me that the president has taken more positive control of this strategy," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of those pushing for more troops. "He understands that the safety of the nation and his legacy is all on the line here."

Nobody knows with certainty what path lies the best route for the safety of the nation. There's a great suspicion, however, that it is extremely unlikely that George W. Bush will be able to find that route by his own decisionmaking. Some Republicans, for many reasons, mostly because they are tied to him, feel Bush deserves one more chance to rescue his legacy. But this should not be about what Bush deserves, not at this point, because a President who got us into this position by his own incuriousity and laxness doesn't deserve such a chance. In the private sector, Bush would have been fired long ago. But unfortunately, we've been taxed with him through 2008. That doesn't mean we should allow him to continue unfettered. He should be considerably hampered in what he can do, unless he can prove - prove - what he's doing is a positive thing.

If Congress allows Bush to fund this escalation, the only acceptable way I can frame it in my mind - and it's an open question - is like this:

Members of Congress feel that by fighting the escalation, they're actually somehow expanding the amount of time that America has to remain in Iraq, and how many people, both American and Iraqi, will be hurt or killed, in this haywire effort. It has to be specifically a risk assessment in the terms of lives in the Iraq effort. It's likely to be tied into a political assessment that American participation in the war might be completely stopped successfully, and to the general consensus of the American public, if Bush continues to fail for two more years, as opposed to a smaller but still continuing fighting presence for years beyond that if the American public is still unsettled on course of action.

I won't even honor an argument from anyone that includes any part of the "Bush legacy" consideration in the equation, because the uninterested President doesn't deserve it at this point. And any Republican that mentions the Bush legacy as somehow positively impacting the decision towards escalation ought to be asked, should America being fighting a war to improve George W. Bush's legacy? Or doing anything, really, for that matter? Haven't we paid enough?

Career move.

WASHINGTON - Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum was defeated in November, but he hopes his new job will allow him to slay America's enemies.

Santorum, a Republican, will lead the "America's Enemies" program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative Washington think tank.

He plans to continue speaking about the threats posed by "Islamic fascism" and such unfriendly nations as Venezuela, North Korea and Iran.

Find a job you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life.

Monday Tony Snow reported that:

The President today spoke with Nicaraguan President Enrique Bola os to thank him for his service to his country.

This just seems weird to me. I don't thank people for being the parents of other kids, I don't thank people for running their own insurance offices, I don't thank the Governor of Iowa for being Governor of Iowa. It just doesn't seem... like it's my place to do these things, because I'm not the beneficiary of these things. And it would never occur to me to thank a President of another country for his or her service to her country, unless I lived there, or had first-hand experience of that service to that country.

Maybe it's a President Solidarity thing, I dunno. Just seems odd that Bush saw it as part of his position to thank another nation's leader for his service to his own country.

Politics Police.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell is questioning the arrest of a political activist who allegedly stepped toward her during her inaugural parade last week.

The activist, Ken Krayeske, was on a list of people labeled political threats by police. Rell, in a letter to the state's public safety commissioner, said Monday that she was "disturbed" to learn of the existence of such a list.

She called on Commissioner Leonard Boyle to review the circumstances of Krayeske's arrest and determine how he came to the attention of state police and how his name and photograph were provided to the Hartford Police Department.

"In this environment of heightened security, the use of information must be balanced with the individual rights of our citizens," Rell said in the letter. "In providing security and protection, we cannot permit the rights of individuals to be trampled."

Krayeske, 33, of Hartford, was charged with breach of peach and interfering with an officer after he was detained during Wednesday's parade through downtown Hartford. Rell was sworn in that day to her first full term as governor.

Krayeske's attorney was working as a freelance journalist and was trying to photograph Rell. According to a police report, officers at the parade recognized Krayeske from a picture provided by state police and the Connecticut Intelligence Center, a multi-agency entity under the umbrella of the state's homeland security programs.

Officers said they recognized Krayeske when they saw him speed up on his mountain bike, dump it and jump off, then run up the street and step off the curb into the parade route.

All these people that are supporting the escalation in troops fall back on the strawman argument that we can't just up and leave immediately or disaster will happen for the United States, and we're losing now doing what we're doing, and if we lose disaster will happen for the United States, and the only possible way to avoid disaster is to escalate.

So here's the question for them - how much disaster do we have to have by escalating to admit that it's a disaster for the United States? Remember when there were no American troops in Iraq? Then, Bush insisted we attack, and in essence we escalated, and we attacked, and it's been disastrous. Oh, sure, there are people who claim it's not been disastrous, but they're insane or ignorant or irresponsible or a combination of all three.

So how much disastrous escalation can we afford? What's the limit for McCain or Lieberman or Bush? Is it requiring a draft to feed the growing armies that fight in Iraq? Is it the use of weapons of mass destruction that currently we have kept off the table (yes, nuclear)? Is it the further seeding of enmity for generations around the world for the government of the United States? What is their limit? Do they have a limit? Or do we continue to expand the fight in Iraq, regardless of the possibility of doing anything good for Iraq, the United States, or the world, because we're afraid to admit we made a horrible, horrible mistake?

Are we really gonna give the guy that's wrecked every car he's driven the past 4 years ANOTHER CAR to drive over a cliff?

America, please say no.

I guess I'm missing the appeal. Would anyone go to this if they aren't in a family of a U.S. Marshal?

Fort Smith, Arkansas, learned Thursday it was chosen over a Virginia city to be the home for a national U. S. Marshals Service museum. Officials with the city and the area marshals district began receiving phone calls about 4 p. m. from the federal government notifying them that Fort Smith had landed its coveted museum. Dick O'Connell, the U. S. marshal for the Western District of Arkansas, was among them, even though he happened to be home sick. "We have been sitting on pins and needles over this thing," O'Connell said Thursday evening. "We've been hoping and anticipating, and we, we knew the decision would not come until after the new year.

In general, I like museums, and I'm not opposed to this museum, but in a time where federal money is tight and needs continue to grow, it seems like maybe a better idea to spend these funds on the actual required responsibilities of the U.S. Marshal Service, rather than on a museum.

I only hear McCain's and Lieberman's names... are there only two members of Congress supporting the escalation in Iraq?

I'm sure most of the outrage is going to be about the "surge" he's likely going to propose, but I hope the news media looks around as to whether he's suggesting anything to increase the number of Iraqi refugees we allow into the United States. At this point it is unacceptable for the United States to not be considering, both for now and for when we eventually leave Iraq, our responsibility towards the throngs of Iraqis that will be seeking to leave that nation.

Just once, I'd like to see some conservative blogger that feels the need to accuse Democrats of something like this:

And now, just as we’re involved in another war that they desperately want us to lose, they’re back in power.

give at least an effort to explain why they think that Democrats want the U.S. to lose a war. Is there any logic they can offer, beyond some craven elementary theory of partisan politics? In other words, if things were reverse, and a Democratic President and Congress had completely bumbled their way into a horrible idea for a war that kept expanding with no end in sight, would they themselves want the U.S. to lose the war? Are these bloggers just transferring their own values? If not, then try to use some proof and logic to make a point.