Lies and the Lying Liars ...

Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table shortly after her election as Speaker of the House. Is time for her to put it back on? Politico's Mike Allen has an interesting write up of Ron Suskind's new book.

Suskind writes in The Way of the World, to be published Tuesday,
that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to
portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification
for the Iraq war.
The
author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi
intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq –
intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion."

Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster! Isn't that enough to get Bush and Cheney perp walked out of the White House for a quick flight to Leavenworth? Four thousand plus dead Americans, score of thousands of dead Iraqis, and we still can't charge them as War Criminals?

Suskind's book is intriguing and I am swinging by Borders to pick up a copy today. More later.

(h/t TPM)

Sullivan's Best of Series (Torture Edition)

Andrew Sullivan reposted his excellent, and well documented argument against Torture. His write up from earlier this year, about the Former Cheerleader's Administration use of "enhanced interrogation" is at once compelling and horrifying. Some graphic images are included in the post so please use caution if you are in the least bit squeamish.

What has been done in our name? What has been done to our country's reputation? Time for these treacherous rat-bastards to go.

The Surveillance State

In this NY Times piece a stunning revelation is made:

“What he saw,” said Bruce Afran, a New Jersey lawyer representing the plaintiffs along with Carl Mayer, “was decisive evidence that within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.”

The NSA program was never about the so-called war on terror. It was always about a war on the liberty of the American people.

Had enough?

The Washington political game is Decadent and Depraved.

Will the Washington press corps will return to the peak of its awesome, but normally dormant potential—much as it did during the Watergate debacle? The Washington press corps is more interested in access to naked power than its is in the unvarnished truth. They drink the free liquor of the political in crowd, and feed us the scraps of what they call the truth. What turned out to be the biggest media bungle of the early 21st century has yet to be investigated with the full force and ferocity required to shed light on what may soon be know as the Biggest Fucking Mistake in American Foreign Policy History.

Whoa! Is that Representative Z wearing his mother’s panties? Let’s interrupt this report on White House war criminals to bring you an important update on the Rep Z saga.

NEWFLASH: Rep Z is apparently NOT wearing his lapel pin. The scandal is deepening.

Sunny Side Up

"Doc" Thompson put it best (and it fully applies today) in his NYT Op/Ed piece published (subscription required) January 1, 1974 and later included The Great Shark Hunt:

For now, we should make every effort to look at the bright side of the Nixon Administration. It has been a failure of such monumental proportions that political apathy is no longer considered fashionable, or even safe, among millions of people who only two years ago thought that anybody who disagreed openly with "the Government" was either paranoid or subversive. Political candidates in 1974, at least, are going to have to deal with an angry disillusioned electorate that is not likely to settle for flag waving and pompous waving.

Sully Throws the WC at Bush

Some of the more vociferous comments in the blogosphere have used the term war criminal to describe the former Cheerleader and his henchmen. Evidently it ain't just those wild and crazy liberals anymore.