Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Come on, man.

You know he’s going to shit a cat.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

This fight is for everything.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

It’s possible to be a liberal firebrand without crapping on the party.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

In after Baud. Damn.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

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Archives for 2008

Whistleblower Protections Strengthened

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This seems significant:

A federal judge has ruled that Amnesty International and other human rights groups can assert the same privileges that journalists use, allowing them to better protect anonymous sources.

Unless I read it wrong, this makes it far easier to blow the whistle on, say, warrantless surveillance of American citizens by expanding the number of groups that can field a complaint without having to give up your identity. Anything that makes a government that spends so much of its time now looking over our shoulders watch its own back a little more strikes me as a good thing.

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Game On

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As expected California has filed suit to challenge the EPA’s strange (well, strange if you think the EPA still works for the environment) decision to deny the state’s effort to impose greenhouse limits that are stricter than the national standard. The whole story is a real chin-scratcher because a federal judge recently ruled that California can do exactly that. Unless the EPA has some magical new legal theory this case ought to shut practically before it opens.

Who knows, it could be that the Bushies hope to try out one of their shiny new judges, or the new SCOTUS majority. Any other explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense.

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Robbing Earth To Pay Mars

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Troubles at NASA.

NASA devotes about $5.4 billion a year to its science program, divided among specialties like astrophysics, earth science and planetary exploration. To finance President Bush’s exploration initiative to return humans to the Moon, while also financing space shuttle operations and a shuttle replacement out of the agency’s approximately $16 billion annual budget, science program money is being held to about a 1 percent increase per year for four years.

Factoring in inflation and the loss of what had been anticipated financing increases, space experts say this amounts to a loss for NASA science of about $3 billion over that period. For Dr. Stern, that means doing more with less.

The bulk of the article describes “innovative” work by S. Alan Stern, the new director of the NASA space science division, to force the agency’s famously sprawling projects to do a better job of balancing their accounts. Is that really news? Agencies with reduced budgets always tighten up their accounting, among other things. Incentive-wise it’s just the flip side of the way that agencies loosen the belt a bit when the budget increases more than expected. The article doesn’t even make the case that Dr. Stern actually makes more with less. He is clearly making less with less; the good news is that without creative guidance from Dr. Stern the bleeding might be worse.

The meaningful point in this story is simply that a pointless moon project is stealing resources from the research budget at NASA. We already knew it would do that. The story is not news per se so much as another milestone on a path that smart observers mapped out the moment Bush announced his grand money pit of a space vision.

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More On The Crumbling GOP Coalition

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Via Steve Benen.

DES MOINES — The long-standing coalition of social, economic and national security conservatives that elevated the Republican Party to political dominance has become so splintered by the presidential primary campaign that some party leaders fear a protracted nomination fight that could hobble the eventual nominee.

[…] The breach within the party was evident here Tuesday, two days before Iowa holds the first nominating contests of the presidential race, as Huckabee and Romney each sought to show he could reach across the conservative spectrum and unite Republicans, as did Reagan and George W. Bush in prior elections.

[…] The contrasts in their appeals — the businessman targeting the Christian right, the former preacher targeting the fiscal conservatives — starkly illustrated how the Republican Party’s core constituencies have scattered among rival camps. The net effect has been a fractured field with no clear front-runner.

[…] “None of our candidates seem to have caught on,” said GOP pollster Neil Newhouse. “You have the whack-a-mole Republican primary: As soon as one rises up, the others knock them down.”

This could all just be wanktastic reporting by political journalists who don’t know what to make to the weird nomination race any more than you or I do. It pains me to even think about what kind of crap their insider sources must be feeding them right now. Still, i’ve blogged before that this breakup is a non-trivial phenomenon which could get much, much worse if none of the major GOP factions accepts a turn in the religious right’s traditional chump seat.

In a just world the coalition that brought us torture, war, hurricane FEMA, domestic surveillance, neoconservatism and Terri Schiavo would fall apart, catch fire and fall off a cliff. But political irrelevance and a few public humiliations/convictions will have to do.

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John Durham Vs. The CIA

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I think it is safe to say that the CIA torture tape story just hit the big time. Attorney General Mukasey apparently went right past the option of slow-rolling an in-house investigation (does David Addington’s direct line into the AG’s office still connect?) and appointed an outside prosecutor. Better, Mukasey didn’t choose a hack; John Durham has a reputation for taking down big game that ranks up there with Pat Fitzgerald and Elliot Spitzer.

What exactly an “outside prosecutor” does and what degree of independence he has relative to say, Pat Fitzgerald’s investigation remains unclear to me. Any insight about what exactly we can expect from this sort of investigation would be much appreciated.

The administration will certainly hang out a disposable patsy like Scooter Libby Pfc. Lynndie England CIA division head Jose Rodriguez. If Rodriguez accepts the role of loyal fall guy then it may end there. However, a resulting trial probably wouldn’t finish in time for a Bush pardon, so unless the president pulls an Ernie Fletcher Rodriguez could face good honest jail time. Then there is the question of how many such tapes the CIA really had/has (believe they only taped three interrogations? I have some pets.com shares to sell you). If the fall guy doesn’t fall quietly then things could get interesting.

***Update***

Marty Lederman: there is nothing “special” or “outside” about Durham’s appointment. The regular eastern VA US Attorney recused himself so Durham was appointed as acting US Attorney for the purposes of this case.

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