This straw-man attack on non-believers (as opposed to non-Christians?) shows how paranoid Christian faith is these days. It's not enough to have a government recognized holiday, to have outlets at every major intersection in America with Christmas nativity scenes (in front of Roman execution hardware) garishly illuminated, to have endless hours of public airwave time devoted to their holiday; now they have to actively attack atheists to deflect the shame for their slavish devotion to buying stuff for the holiday instead of actually following the philosophy of Christ and be charitable instead. Let us not forget that this 'religious observance' at the Malls accounts for nearly all the profits that the big box retailers earn during the year. So much for piety, eh?

So leave the atheists out of it. We didn't create this mess, and we don't care if you want to pursue this religious holiday on your own time, own property and with your own money. All we ask is that you recognized that the sentence "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." means you can't use public land, nor public money to recognize this holiday (nor Hanukkah, nor Kwanza, not even Festivus). Seems pretty straightforward and one would think that limited-government, no taxation Republicans could get behind that idea. One would think ...

Jul. 04, 2007 | Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on what is, in everything but name, George Bush's pardon of Scooter Libby.

"I didn't vote for him," an American once said, "But he's my president, and I hope he does a good job." That -- on this eve of the Fourth of July -- is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The man who said those 17 words -- improbably enough -- was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them when he learned of the hair's-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon, in 1960.

"I didn't vote for him but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job." The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier. But there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne's voice: The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgment that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our commander in chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.

We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president's partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world, but merely that we may function.

But just as essential to the 17 words of John Wayne is an implicit trust, a sacred trust: that the president for whom so many did not vote can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire republic.

Our generation's willingness to state "We didn't vote for him, but he's our president, and we hope he does a good job" was tested in the crucible of history, and earlier than most.

And in circumstances more tragic and threatening. And we did that with which history tasked us. We enveloped our president in 2001. And those who did not believe he should have been elected -- indeed those who did not believe he had been elected -- willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of nonpartisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and reconfigured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.

Did so even before the appeals process was complete. Did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice. Did so despite what James Madison -- at the Constitutional Convention -- said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes "advised by" that president.

Did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder: To what degree was Mr. Libby told, "Break the law however you wish -- the president will keep you out of prison"?

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental compact between yourself and the majority of this nation's citizens, the ones who did not cast votes for you.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the president of the United States. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the president of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party.

And this is too important a time, Sir, to have a commander in chief who puts party over nation. This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics. The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of "a permanent Republican majority," as if such a thing -- or a permanent Democratic majority -- is not antithetical to that upon which rests our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.

Yet our democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove. And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government. But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain into a massive oil spill.

The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment.

The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.

The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws.

The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this president decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war. I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient. I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors. I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent. I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought. I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents. I accuse you of handing part of this republic over to a vice president who is without conscience and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that vice president, carte blanche to Mr. Libby to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to grand juries and special counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.

"Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and, ultimately, the American people."

President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people. It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party's headquarters, and the labyrinthine effort to cover up that break-in and the related crimes.

And in one night, Nixon transformed it. Watergate -- instantaneously -- became a simpler issue: a president overruling the inexorable march of the law, insisting -- in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood -- that he was the law.

Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the courts. Just him. Just, Mr. Bush, as you did, yesterday.

The twists and turns of Plamegate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the "referee" of prosecutor Fitzgerald's analogy, these are complex and often painful to follow and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush, and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal, the average citizen understands that, Sir.

It's the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the prearranged lottery all rolled into one, and it stinks.

And they know it.

Nixon's mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment. It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of nonpartisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to "base," but to country, echoes loudly into history.

Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign. Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush. And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney. You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday. Which one of you chose the route no longer matters. Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant. But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics is the only fact that remains relevant.

It is nearly July Fourth, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a king who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them -- or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them -- we would force our independence and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time -- and our leaders in Congress, of both parties -- must now live up to those standards which echo through our history. Pressure, negotiate, impeach: get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our democracy, away from its helm.

And for you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone -- anyone -- about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, "I didn't vote for him, but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."

I would also submit that if war against Iraq was not justified--even without the WMDs--then there is no justification for war by American forces anywhere at any time.

Billmon's posting inspired me to dig up some of what I wrote at the time. What follows is from an email to a personal Yahoo! email group that I sent on March 17, 2003. The group was not political in any way, but as the war loomed, a few of us got into it with a lone war-supporter on the list. Part of his response to my email was this:

Over these past few weeks, I've essentially been called a stupid, idiotic, crack-smoking knucklehead deserving to be punched out. All this, because I'm apparently swallowing all the lies spit out by Bush, Cheney, Powell, and Rumsfeld.

In the face of such personal attacks, it's been some consolation to me that if I'm stupid, gullible, or a liar, than so must be those frequent defenders of my positions, such as Fox News, the WSJ editorial page, talk radio and a few hundred WarBloggers.

I do get a couple of things wrong. At one point, I cite 500,000 to 1,000,000 killed by Hussein, when upper estimates put that at around 350,000. I also claim that the U.S. sold Hussein chemical weapons. That's not strictly true. The weapons were sold by other countries — the U.S. just made sure to prevent any trade embargoes that would prevent the sales and helped cover up Saddam's use of chemical weapons.

Without further ado, the email (names have been changed):

In response to outcry from many different corners, including a denunciation from the ADL (Prager, by the way, is Jewish), Dennis published a jaw-dropping follow-up response to critics. He notably cited the profanity used on the left-wing blogs and the fact that they called him a bigot. I, myself, called him a "dick" and a "fucking asshole" — "whiny fucking asshole" is more accurate.

Dennis is back today, which an incoherent and fact-free rant clarifying the importance of the Bible to everyone except bad people. What was interesting to me was that in Prager's second column — his response to critics — he claims to believe that all events in public political life should use a Christian Bible and that he disagrees with fellow Jews who would just use an Old Testament (Torah). In this latest column, he bases his moralizing on the idea that the first five books of the Old Testament — the ones that comprise the Torah — are considered "divine" (he doesn't explain what that means) by Jews, Catholics, Protestants and even them there Mormons. So, now he's backed off from the importance of the entire Christian Bible and is now hiding behind the supposed universal authority of the Torah.

Resident Theologian, Sister Weasle explained to me that although all the aforementioned religions include the Torah in their Bibles, none of them use the same text. The Jews who consider the Torah to be divine, such as the Hasidim, goes as far as considering the sequence of Hebrew characters in the text itself to be sacred. To them, a book like the King James Bible, used by Protestants or the Catholic Septuagint is a blaphemy. Also, good luck getting any of these groups to agree on the proper interpretation of the books. Prager sees no potential disagreement:

And they line up together on virtually every major social/moral issue.

Name the issue: same-sex marriage; the morality of medically unnecessary abortions; capital punishment for murder; the willingness to label certain actions, regimes, even people "evil"; skepticism regarding the United Nations and the World Court; strong support for Israel; or a willingness to criticize the moral state of Islamic societies. While there are exceptions -- there are, for example, secular conservatives who share the Bible-believers' social views -- belief in a God-based authority of the Torah is as close to a predictable dividing line as exists.

Then there is Prager's inexplicable claim that the books of the Torah are "over 2,500 years" old. That is technically true, but a more accurate — and knowledgeable — statement would be that the Torah dates back over 4,500 years. It seems odd that a religious Jew who claims to have some kind of broad knowledge about world religions, and teaches the Torah at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, doesn't seem to know when his own holy books were written.

The only answer is that Dennis Prager is also... a complete moron.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again, "Free Republic has some of the finest minds I’ll ever know."

And a special thanks to Rush Limbaugh. You have galvanized the conservative movement, enacted the "New Media," and given hope and optimism to so many people. You ardently support Americans and give us daily doses of truths. Thank you for keeping “The Passion” alive. Merry Christmas, Rush Limbaugh.

Condor7: "Aha. Now the treasonous nature of the Dmocrat Party comes flying to the fore. I wonder how many of the liberal socialist crowd have back channels to Zahwhari? It is likely the prime reason they were caterwalling so loudly about the Presidents telephone surveillance program."
Responding to Al Qaeda's message about the American elections

bray: "These people were shields for the terrorists and our Marines are getting railroaded. We have to make sure they get a fair and OPEN trial. Pray for W and Our Marines
In chorus with others that the charges against the Marines in Haditha must be completely false. Why we need to pray for President Bush is beyond me. Maybe so he doesn't get tried for his war crimes either.

all the best: "Progressive is to keep moving, moving, moving in a leftward direction. Moving and never arriving. No matter how far we go they want to take us a little bit farther. I wish that all liberal/progressives would have the guts to come out and say what their desired end result is. And then they will tell us the shocking truth and we will all know. Or they will lie and then we can hold them to the limit of their lie."
This was on a thread about Air America Radio in Madison, WI. Not sure what it was getting at.

King Moonracer: "I'm sure Al-Quaeda loves Gore too."
Responding to a 3-year-old article about Al Gore joining the Apple board of directors.

chiefqc: "This judge can sleep well knowing he just enabled this horrific doctor to continue to murder babies for money."
Responding to a story about a judge who threw out a baseless case against an abortion provider. The case had been brought by an anti-abortion crusading DA in Kansas.

An interesting construct that General Pace uses is, "We're not winning, we're not losing."

I actually find that statement to be pretty accurate. The current situation may seem intolerable to some but we’re nowhere near losing.

Whatever the case, I'd like to explore the ramifications of agreeing with the President. If we're not winning and we're not losing, then we are not moving towards any kind of end condition, positive or negative. So... does that mean we're going to keep treading blood water indefinitely? Or are we going to wait until there is an unmistakable outcome? If so, what outcome?

As comments to the "Blogs of War" post point out, the situation in Iraq is trending towards bad. If we aren't losing, we'll need to turn that around before we are losing. Rosy predictions from armchair pundits aren't going to help. Consider this post at Military.com — not a haven for anti-military hippies — claiming that pessimistic press coverage of a recent Pentagon report wasn't pessimistic enough.

Maybe it can be argued that we are not currently losing the war in Iraq, but there is abundant evidence that we are headed towards a loss. Sending more troops will solve nothing — note that Iraq reached it's "worst point this year" during Operation Together Forward, a military operation intended to secure Baghdad.

The remaining war cheerleaders don't seem to understand: it is possible for America to lose a war. Let's not prove that, OK? Time to get out of Iraq.

We now return to our 'round the clock "Zippy the Pinhead" commentary on "winning the war." The Preznit says, "I ... don't believe most Americans want us just to get out now." Actually only 32% of Americans want troops to stay indefinitely. Meanwhile, only 11% support sending more troops.

Hiccuping & trembling into the WASTE DUMPS of New Jersey like some drunken CABBAGE PATCH DOLL, coughing in line at FIORUCCI'S!!

"Oh!" you say, "This isn't about blow jobs! It's about underage sex!" Well, actually it's about blow jobs. You see, if the guilty party had actually had sexual intercourse with his young partner, he would have been guilty of committing a misdemeanor. Since he got a blow job, he's subject to a minimum sentencing guideline of 10 years in prison.

Justice is served — and it tastes like manmeat.

Despite the languishing middle class, Republicans love to talk about how great the economy is doing. Their proof? Well, look at the fabulous stock market! The market is only part of the economic picture, but since it's the only really rosy part, that's what we're supposed to focus on.

OK, now that we're all focusing on the thriving stock market... omygawd!!!! It's choking on regulation! Oh no, we've got to save it! Never fear, Henry Paulson (Treasury Secretary) is here! Paulson will get rid of all that regulation that's keeping the market down! Oh, did we mention how well the market is doing?

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has more here.

Good choice.

Now that Iraq has turned into the 21^st Century's first great debacle, many people have made the indisputable, and thoroughly unfortunate, observation that the average Iraqi had a better life under Saddam Hussein than they do under the current Iraqi/American regime. In an obvious attempt to deflect attention from reality, Iraq War supporters reflexively answer this observation with, "Oh! So you would rather have Saddam Hussein in power! You must love Saddam!"

Bullshit.

Subsequent to his admission to George Washington University Hospital yesterday, Sen. Tim Johnson was found to have had an intracerebral bleed caused by a congenital arteriovenous malformation. He underwent successful surgery to evacuate the blood and stabilize the malformation. The Senator is recovering without complication in the critical care unit at George Washington University Hospital. It is premature to determine whether further surgery will be required or to assess any long term prognosis.

Well, look, I want control of the Senate as much as the next Republican, but not this way: best wishes for a speedy recovery to Senator Johnson. Sheer human decency should overrule partisanship on a story like this…

If you guys acted like this when you were running the place, you might still be in power (i.e., WWTDD — What Would Tom DeLay Do?”)

Maybe never. If Johnson dies or decides to resign, the Republicans will gain a Senate seat. They will probably accept this gracefully, given the circumstances, but I predict it won't be long before they start claiming a "mandate" kept them in power in the Senate, trying to erase the electoral beating of last month. But there's another possibility.

If Johnson neither dies nor resigns, he keeps the seat. He may be unable to function, but that's never been a problem for the Republicans. Strom Thurmond was obviously senile in his last couple of years in office, but the Republicans wheeled the poor old man around the Senate chambers anyway, just to keep the seat. So if Johnson turns out to be too disabled to realistically conduct his duties as Senator, but the Democrats convince him to hold the seat anyway, how long until the Republican wailing and gnashing of teeth begins? Who is going to be the first Freeper to call for someone to "remove Johnson's feeding tube"? How long before the talking points declaring that Thurmond was sharp as a tack until his last day are circulated?

My prediction? Well, if you don't know what a nanosecond is, you will after measure the duration of Republican civility in the face of a disabled Johnson holding his seat.