So Team Chimpy gets caught with their grubby little hands in the cookie jar again. Time to pull out the spin and attack machine. Cheney says he was “offended” while Bush called it “disgraceful”. Not their actions, mind, you, but that the press dared to inform the public of yet another flagrant privacy violation by the swollen executive.

Right on cue, the talking heads are making the circuit with the political equivalent of 'I know you are but what am I?' calling for the NYT’s editors to be shackled, pelted with rotten fruit, flogged, drawn and quartered, and hung on a spike outside the White House lawn.

Peter King: Chris, I think the administration acted entirely appropriately. The 1976 U.S. Supreme Court case gives them, to me, the absolute right to do this. They’re in full compliance with all statutes. To me, the real question here is the conduct of the New York Times by disclosing this in time of war, they have compromised America’s anti-terrorist policies. This is a very effective policy. They have compromised it. This is the second time the New York Times has done this. And to me, no one elected the New York Times to do anything. And the New York Times is putting its own arrogant elitist left wing agenda before the interests of the American people, and I’m calling on the Attorney General to begin a criminal investigation and prosecution of the New York Times — its reporters, the editors who worked on this, and the publisher.

If King had his way, this is what the U.S. press would look like within a year.

Bill Keller, executive editor for the NYT issued a response today saying that “the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.”

Meanwhile, looks like those wacky leftists at the New York Times aren’t the only ones scratching their soft, liberal heads. Belgium has opened an investigation into the legality of the administrations actions. The bloggers are unified in their disgust (of course, they are all beholden to the Godfather, Don Markos) while some experts are making the case that the program is not only useless, but betrays an utter lack of understanding among the administration as to how terrorist financing works.

Vicious terrorists in Miami or group of boobs trying to score cool Al-Qu’eda schwag?

Many Iraq war veterans returning to homelessness. Wow, I wonder who cut their benefits? Alas, if only we’d slapped on just a few more yellow bumper magnets.

Bad Boys. Whatcha gonna do? South Carolina State Trooper gets fired for being an unhinged lunatic with a gun. How do you like that trooper cam now?

Limbaugh detained in Palm Beach for smuggling prescription medication in violation of his plea agreement. Claims the prescription was in his doctor’s name to avoid embarrassment. Will he be embracing the evil, pinko-commie ACLU again?

Damnit! My little brother made me gay!

Ned Lamont’s election campaign – If [Lieberman] looks like Bush and acts like Bush, he’s not a Connecticut Democrat. Ouch!

Texas executes innocent man. You know, again.

George Lakoff, Marc Ettlinger and Sam Ferguson make a convincing case for Bush’s (in)competence.

So much for that even split among the peons for an Iraq withdrawal plan.

A ‘perfect storm’ descends upon the nation’s capital. Some sort of biblical cleansing? Payback for the NOLA response maybe? Of course, Pat Buchanan would probably say it was divine retribution for high Democratic poll numbers.

Via Metafilter:

SCOTUS strikes down campaign finance restrictions [pdf]. The Supreme Court issued an opinion today in Randall v. Sorrell, striking down limits on campaign contributions and campaign spending imposed by the state of Vermont. The Court, in a fractured opinion (six separate opinions, including two dissents), concluded that restrictions on both contributions and expenditures ran afoul of the First Amendment. More from Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog. Expect more from Rick Hasen later today.

Regardless of to which party you claim allegiance, I think we can all agree that the function of SCOTUS is to interpret the laws from a legal perspective. If you find a particular decision distasteful (such as the cutting of whistleblower protections this month) then you need to go back through the legislature and create laws that are more to your liking.

So that is exactly what congress is trying to do:

In a breakthrough for advocates of whistle-blower rights, the Senate has approved an amendment that would tighten up protections for federal employees who expose waste, fraud, abuse and threats to public safety.

A bipartisan group of senators, led by Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), won unanimous consent last week to include the amendment in the fiscal 2007 defense authorization bill. The amendment was based on a whistle-blower bill introduced by Akaka last year.

Federal employees "who put their country before their personal well-being should not be restrained because of fear of retaliation for doing what's right," Akaka said in a statement.

Unfortunately, the blade cuts both ways and, as the courts prepare to hear arguments in Bush’s “I get to listen to anything you say whenever I want” case, the White House is nearing a draft for congressional legislation to legalize the spying.

C’est la guerre!

It's about time:

When Steven H. Miles, an expert in medical ethics and an advocate for human rights, learned of the neglect, mistreatment, and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere, one of his first thoughts was: "Where were the prison doctors while the abuses were taking place?"

In "Oath Betrayed," Miles explains the answer to this question. Not only were doctors, nurses, and medics silent while prisoners were abused; physicians and psychologists provided information that helped determine how much and what kind of mistreatment could be delivered to detainees during interrogation. Additionally, these harsh examinations were monitored by health professionals operating under the purview of the U.S. military.

I’m glad somebody finally wrote a hard-hitting investigation into this. The debate on medical ethics in the context of GWoT has always worn on my conscience. Between torture, force-feeding, etc., I’ve been wondering how medical professional justify their acquiescence in the face of ‘do no harm’.

UPDATE: Promoted to the top in honor of Monday morning traffic.  

I'm just fooling around with some site designs. I'd definitely appreciate your feedback! Also, if you like the old site layout better, you can create an account and change it back in your account settings page.

As I mentioned in a previous post, it looks like Bush’s infinite war powers are not limited to your phone calls and emails (which, BTW, the White House appears to be retreating on), but also extend to sifting through your bank transactions. The New York Times broke the story, and so therefore obviously must be beheaded as traitors.

In full damage-control mode, the White House (with the aid of Brother Chimpy) unveiled a “major” arrest of a group plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. But wait, it turns out that the arrest was not all it was sold to be. Apparently, this supposed “plot” had never advanced beyond the discussion phase, and no member of the group had even met with an Al-Qu’eda agent.

Oh well, better get another constitutional amendment on the books before people start paying attention to the real news.

Pretty cool video optical illusion, gets me every time.

Warren Buffett, the world’s second richest man, to bequeath bulk of his fortune to the Gates foundation.

Jon Stewart on defeating the minimum wage proposal – Congress took a big dump on the working class who, let’s face it, would only send the extra cash “up their nose and out their hose!”

Coulter is really losing it big time. Here she is defending her statement to have Murtha “fragged” as one of her “best lines” ever.

Pretty good video explanation of the conspiracy theory on the 9-11 Pentagon attack. I’m not ready to call it yet, but I thought the guy raised some really interesting questions that deserve a serious response.

Looks like that Abramoff scandal is cutting a might close to Team Chimpy.

Gotta love this little photo from Newsweek online :

Power of the Blog: Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman stands a good chance of losing his August primary thanks to heavy blogger backing of his opponent, Ned Lamont

Everyone among the establishment MSM is just plain slack-jawed, scratching their hairy primate heads and frothing at the mouth wondering how a loose collection of left-wing wackos in pajamas banging away at laptops from their parent’s basement can have such a profound effect on the political landscape. The reason the MSM fails to understand the power of online activism is that they have completely bought into the right-wing myth characterizing the driving force behind revolutionary movements in the U.S.

While the 60s were undoubtedly an apex of anti-war activism, the right wing has always taken the most extreme elements of this era, drug addled hippies, to characterize anti-war and liberal movements as fringe wackos who are out of touch with the mainstream. But these people were never more than good-hearted moral support for the organizers of the anti-war movement. The real backbone of these periods were the professors, lawyers, professional activists, artists, etc. who published magazines, organized agitations, wrote heartfelt music, etc. These people were smart, motivated, politically savvy, and clever enough to develop some clout.

In contemporary politics, bloggers are the modern extension of one of the major power sources behind the 1960s antiwar efforts. With the ability to reach millions every single day, there is little doubt that we are a force to be reckoned with. There is little doubt that bloggers pose a major threat to both the establishment media and the existing political gatekeepers.

If we were really an irrelevant fringe outside of the mainstream, then wouldn’t it be best to simply ignore us?

There have been a couple of landmarks over the past weeks in terms of body count in the Iraq war. Of course, everyone by now knows that we’ve surpassed the 2500th U.S. soldier killed in Iraq (just a number according to the White House), and now we have a report that at least 50,000 Iraqi’s have died violently since the invasion, a number still thought to be undercounted but at least 20,000 higher than previously admitted by Team Chimpy.

The toll, which is mostly of civilians but probably also includes some security forces and insurgents, is daunting: Proportionately, it is equivalent to 570,000 Americans being killed nationwide in the last three years.

The Dems have been hammering for a while that the war is a pit of quicksand and a phased withdrawal is in order. The failure to produce any fabled Zarqawi “bounce” lends credence to the publics burgeoning awareness that the White House is a sinking ship on this issue. Biden was on Blitzer the other day defending the proposals with this little gem:

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The worst possible thing we could do is what the Democrats are suggesting, and no matter how you carve it, you can call it anything you want, but basically, it is packing it in, going home, persuading and convincing and validating the theory that the Americans don't have the stomach for this fight.

BLITZER: All right. You want to respond to the vice president, Senator Biden?

BIDEN: No, I don't want to respond to him. He's at 20 percent in the polls. No one listens to him. He has no credibility. It's ridiculous.

Although the GOP has been rank and file behind the White House, there has been a surprising retreat on their position in almost the very same weak they defeated to Democratic bills calling for an end to the war.

The first is the rather curious support the GOP is giving to amnesty despite all previous rhetorical saber-rattling to the contrary. Now that the rumors have turned out to be true, Bush’s Iraq is worse than it was under Hussein, and there is no sign of it improving in the foreseeable future, the talking heads are making their rounds in support of the proposal, while some among the GOP appear to be flip-flopping on the issue depending on their audience.

The second is that the Democrats have revealed a report from General Casey, the commander in Iraq:

Senate Democrats reacted angrily yesterday to a report that the U.S. commander in Iraq had privately presented a plan for significant troop reductions in the same week they came under attack by Republicans for trying to set a timetable for withdrawal.

In the political context of “Reality,” it would appear that the Democrats are not only in sync with the American people, but also the military leadership. One would assume this would translate into a big win for the Dems this year. However, the LA Times has a different take:

Last week, Congress debated two Democratic proposals that called for Bush to begin a troop drawdown, resolutions that divided the party. Public acknowledgment of the Casey plan by administration officials could leave the Democratic Party's leaders in an even more awkward position, having backed a withdrawal plan already embraced by the White House — in effect leaving the party with no Iraq policy distinct from the administration's as the parties head into the midterm elections.

So basically, the Dems have been hammering withdrawal for months, the GOP majority overrules them, and the Dems come off as losers. Now the GOP is starting to realize that the Dems were right all along, they present the exact same plan, and the Dems come off as – losers!

Kudos to the MSM for presenting this story completely devoid of historical context. They’re like Drew Barrymore in “50 First Dates;” no short-term memory. They wake up every morning with all of the previous days events simply washed away.