Balkinization

Larry King: Did you dispatch the White House Chief of Staff and the Counsel to the President to the Attorney General's hospital room to try to get him to sign off on the NSA surveillance program?

Dick Cheney: "I don't recall that I gave instructions to that effect."

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What's interesting is that Cheney pretended to wrack his brain to recall whether he gave the fateful "instructions." As if that might actually have happened -- as if there would be nothing out of the ordinary if the Vice President had "instructed" the President's two closest advisors to try to squeeze a cabinet official.

Any other Vice President in the history of the Republic would have responded in a way that revealed how absurd the question was (i.e., how absurd it should be), to wit:

"I don't give instructions to those persons. They work for the President, not for me. Indeed, when they do act, they act as agents of the President. I can make recommendations, of course. But that's really beside the point, because ultimately it's the President's call whether to send his two closest advisers to bring pressure to bear on a cabinet official."...   more »

Sirotablog

First it was “we must burn down the village to save it.” Now, according to Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), we should deny American children health care because there’s a tiny possibility illegal immigrant children might get health care, too. I kid you not. I guess this means Tancredo also wants us to stop funding, say, firefighting [...]

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DownWithTyranny!

A day barely goes by without Nancy Pelosi taking the impeachment of another Republican arch-criminal off the table. I'm surprised the Justice Department was able to raid Ted Stevens' home without her claiming it would be disruptive to her plans-- which will be obstructed to death in the Senate like every single thing she does anyway-- for health care for impoverished children in Darfur.

But her exceedingly "moderate" stance on impeachment for the worst constitutional criminals in the history of America-- or at least since they ideological antecedents started the Civil War-- hasn't quieted Cheney down. Today he was on an Infotainment show-- Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith's breasts being otherwise occupied-- raving about how the hardworking Bush Regime is being persecuted by evil Democratic witch hunters.

With respect to the U.S. Attorneys, there has been, I think, a bit of a witch hunt on Capitol Hill as they keep rolling over rocks hoping they can find something. But there really hasn’t been anything that has come up to suggest that there was any wrongdoing of any kind... Al’s [Abu Gonzo] a good man, a good friend, on a difficult assignment."

Tony Snow is also ...   more »

Sirotablog

Over the last month, I’ve written a series of posts about how Rocky Mountain voters - and even some Rocky Mountain Republican officials - are rejecting the Washington-based conservative movement’s economic zealotry, and specifically its cut-taxes-at-all-cost religion. Now it looks like that’s happening in the reddest of red states, Wyoming. The Associated Press reports that [...]

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Sirotablog

Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi is apparently starting a local Colorado branch of the national Republican Party’s new “Blame the Left First Crowd” - a group of people who would like America to believe the Iraq War has been a disaster not because of President Bush or neoconservatives in Washington, but because progressive bloggers have [...]

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DownWithTyranny!

It wasn't that long ago that Bush was flying high and the extremists who dominated his party were demanding that the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee not be given to the unpredictable and volatile Arlen Specter (R-PA). Specter was humiliated by the right and forced to agree to a series of horrific demands regarding what he could and could not do if they allowed him to take the chairmanship. He was allowed to huff and puff, but other than that, he had to clear everything with Rove. Now the Democrats control the committee, Patrick Leahy is chairman and Arlen is the ranking minority member. He's getting his revenge on the extremists-- or is he?

According to the Hill he "emerged from a crucial Monday briefing and gave the Bush administration 18 hours to resolve the controversy over apparent contradictions in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s congressional testimony." I think Leahy didn't put a date on a similar demand he made Sunday on Face the Nation. We now have 4 influential senators requesting a special prosecutor, half a dozen congressmen introducing an impeachment motion in the House, and the two highest ranking members of the Judiciary Committee demanding an ...   more »