Is this over the top?

I'm not asking that question rhetorically. I'm really not sure what to make of this column by Paul Craig Roberts, a former assistant treasury secretary in the Reagan administration, a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and a contributing editor of the National Review (in short, a bona fide conservative).

Roberts is dramatic, to put it mildly: "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the U.S. could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran...The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown."

Man, them's strong words. Even I, a liberal who's ever distrustful of the Bush administration, haven't imagined anything so apocalyptic. And this Roberts guy, as I say, is a conservative.

I hope he's wrong. If he's not, I hope Congress heeds his warning.

POSTSCRIPT: Roberts is the second prominent conservative in recent days to argue strongly for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. A week ago today, I offered here a link to a 25-minute video of Bruce Fein making his case for giving these guys the heave-ho.

The unpopularity that dare not speak its name

This is worse than Nixon ever had it.

An 82-year-old doctor in suburban Philadelphia is suing the local township for false arrest in connection with his having been collared by the cops for carrying an anti-war sign at a campaign event for President Bush a few years ago. The trial is set to begin tomorrow.

The judge in the case has dismissed a motion by attorneys for the township to bar the plaintiff's lawyers from mentioning Bush's name for fear that it will engender sympathy for the plaintiff among jurors.

The story is here.

(H/T to Crooks and Liars)

Why do our troops hate our troops?

It's reported here that more than two-thirds of the financial contributions to presidential campaigns by active-duty U.S. troops in the second quarter of this year went to anti-war candidates.

The ranks apparently are infested by defeatist, cut-and-run surrendercrats, right? What cowards! Why aren't they supporting our brave, patriotic Republican candidates?

Why would Hastert quit in mid-term?

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, whose 14th District of Illinois borders on RascalLand, is expected to announce soon whether he'll run for a 12th term.

Nobody will be surprised if Hastert decides against a bid for re-election. Indeed, several would-be successors in both parties already are champing at the proverbial bit.

But political columnist Bob Novak suggests that a more dramatic departure by Hastert -- a mid-term resignation -- might be in the offing.

And then there's this from Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet, who says Hastert is running low on campaign money and has spent a bundle on lawyers to deal with any potential hassles arising from last year's Mark Foley sex scandal. Sweet also sees the possibility of mid-term resignation by Hastert.

Would Don Manzullo want President Bush to campaign for him here in Rockford?

Some conservative Republicans are less than eager to have President Bush appear with them on the campaign trail, lest his unpopularity rub off on them.

Which raises this question about the Republican from The Rascal's 16th Congressional District of Illinois: Would Don Manzullo want Bush alongside him on the stump?

If not, why not? After all, Manzullo has consistently voted the Bush line from the get-go, especially on matters related to the war in Iraq. If the administration's policies are worthy of unswerving support, why should Manzullo avoid a public embrace of their author?

Just asking. Hell, for all I know, Manzullo might actually welcome Bush. But, of course, Bush would refuse to appear in a truly public forum. His handlers allow only carefully selected audiences of dependable loyalists at his events.

Sins of the so-called liberal media

As usual, Jamison Foser has it right.

What time is it, kids? It's Saturday cartoon time!

Hey, let's go over to Uncle Bob Geiger's place and look at his weekly collection of political cartoons.

Psst! You're outta here 18 months from today!

The countdown begins.

Your liberal media

(Click on image to enlarge)

Pen-pushing pantywaists and labcoat Larrys

Nutty letters to the editor are a staple in almost every newspaper, but this one from a paper in Tennessee is something special.

(H/T to Jesus' General.)

A chickenhawk convention

In this video, Max Blumenthal visits a gathering of College Republicans, all of whom are enthusiastic supporters of the war in Iraq, but none of whom can bring themselves to participate in it.

My favorite in this piece is the guy who wants to "become like a really good like speaker and stuff."

Wooden-headedness

Ray McGovern, a retired CIA officer and now an executive with a church-affiliated publishing venture, invokes the late historian Barbara Tuchman to make a point about the current American crisis.

It's a cautionary tale about "cognitive dissonance" in politics.

Mr. Progress speaks out

This nice little 30-second TV spot -- aimed at Sen. Mitch McConnell, in this case -- shows the commander-in-chief stuck in a rut of faux progress.

Newspaper owned by benefactor of the Rockford Institute questions Bush's mental stability

Richard Mellon Scaife, who inherited billions in banking, oil and aluminum money, has funded countless conservative causes over the years, including the Rockford Institute, a paleoconservative think tank headquartered here in Rascal City.

It was Scaife money that dug up enough dirt on Bill Clinton to get the ball rolling toward his eventual impeachment, and it was Scaife's ideology that turned his principal publishing asset, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, into a raging right-wing newspaper.

But now the Tribune-Review has waxed apostate, editorially calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and suggesting that President Bush has perhaps gone bonkers.

Diane Sawyer is just about as politically sophisticated as Tom Sawyer

Diane Sawyer, a former flunky for Richard Nixon during the Watergate years and now a host on ABC's morning show, distinguished herself today by displaying her ignorance of how the filibuster process works in the U.S. Senate.

In recent months, Senate Republicans have been signaling their willingness to filibuster anything having to do with the Iraq War. It's been in all the papers, but Sawyer seems not to have grasped the situation.

And now that Harry Reid and the Democrats are threatening to force the Republicans to wage a real filibuster, not just a pro forma version of such, Sawyer's become more confused than usual.

Said she this morning: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid vows to filibuster, talking all night to close out all topics besides a vote on Iraqi troop withdrawals."

Right-wing bloviator Fred Barnes, a guest on the show, chose not to correct Sawyer, preferring instead to compound her error with this bit of brilliance: "In effect, you know, Harry Reid is going to keep everybody in the Senate overnight. All he's doing is filibustering his own bill..."

It's a Republican filibuster, people, a Republican filibuster. It's an effort by Republicans to prevent an up-and-down vote on setting a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. A majority of Senators favor such a timetable, but the Republican filibuster sets the bar at 60-percent just to get a vote on the underlying legislation.

Do you understand now, Diane?

First-class journalism

Is it any wonder that Republican Don Manzullo keeps getting re-elected to Congress from the 16th District of Illinois?

Not when he can play some of the district's news media like freakin' violins.

Witness this piece on the Web site of the Northwest Herald in Crystal Lake, wherein the following two sentences lead the story:

The U.S. House of Representatives will consider a transportation bill this week that includes $250,000 to extend Algonquin Road west of Route 47. U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo, R-Ill., secured the money for the project, which he said would ease traffic congestion in one of the region’s fastest-growing areas.

But, of course, the bill hasn't yet been approved; hence, the money is not yet "secured." And when you do all the math, the money turns out to be only a little more than one-half of one percent of the total cost of the project.

And when you plow through the rest of the political B.S., you learn that the whole thing is in the beginning stages of a preliminary phase and that the project won't be completed for years, if ever.

You see, all a congressperson has to do is order some minion to issue a press release, and the local media -- or most of them, anyway -- will rush it into print or on the air, no matter if it's real news or not.

The so-called reporters on such stories are not much more than stenographers.

How dumb can you get?

Bill O'Reilly, the dim-witted commentator on the Fox News Channel, waxed offended the other night because a liberal blog site had referred to Pope Benedict XVI as a "primate."

O'Reilly seems not to know that one of the definitions of "primate" is: a bishop of highest rank.

Read about it here and follow the links therein.

Bush is no friend of the military

President Bush likes to pretend that the debate over the war in Iraq comes down to him and the U.S. military on one side and the radical hippies and nervous-nellie womenfolk on the other.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the military veterans in Congress oppose Bush's Iraq policy, as do scads of retired generals.

When active-duty generals express misgivings about his policy, they get fired or otherwise shunted aside in favor of somebody who will toe the line. And then, when his policy fails to produce desirable results, he blames the generals who followed his orders.

Cheating is a baseball tradition

Barry Bonds, who's just four home runs shy of Hank Aaron's career record at this writing, is in Chicago this week for a four-game set between his San Francisco Giants and the Cubs.

The city's boo-birds and sports moralists doubtless are ready for the occasion. They say it'll be an injustice when Bonds breaks Aaron's record. They say the guy is a cheater who took performance-enhancing drugs. They say he's a disgrace to the game.

I say screw the whole lot of them.

Even if Bonds has been a cheater -- although he's never formally been charged as such and has never flunked a drug test -- his sins are only part of baseball's colorful mosaic of cheating, which goes back to the sport's earliest days. Hell, even Albert G. Spalding, the Rockford product who turned baseball into the National Pastime, cheated with his utterly fictitious story that the game was invented by Abner Doubleday. There's no evidence that Doubleday ever even saw a baseball game, much less came up with the idea.

The history of baseball is one long story of cheating and unfairness and inconsistencies that should warrant a giant asterisk of qualification on the whole damn book of records. Consider, for example, that Hank Aaron was the first black player to hit more than 700 homers mainly because black players were barred from the major leagues through most of the first half of the 20th century. If Josh Gibson, the fabled Negro League star, had been given the chance, might he have hit even more homers than Aaron did? We'll never know.

We'll also never know whether Babe Ruth would have hit 714 homers if the live-ball era hadn't dawned early in his career. And then there's the question of the even-livelier-ball era of more recent decades. And the question of who would have hit more or fewer homers if the dimensions of baseball parks were standardized. And the question of how many homers actually were hits that bounced off the field and over the fence back when that was the rule.

Countless other questions arise with regard to the lowering of the pitcher's mound by one-third in 1969, and with regard to the not-so-uncommon practice of pitchers illegally doctoring the ball with saliva, Vaseline, emory boards, sandpaper, thumbtacks and who-knows what-else.

There are questions that arise with regard to bats illegally filled with cork or superballs, or with regard to groundskeepers secretly altering the playing surface to benefit the home team, or with regard to spies in manually-operated scoreboards illegally stealing signs from the visiting team. There are questions about the effects of the designated-hitter rule in the American League and the advent of artificial playing surfaces.

There are lingering questions about the effects of gambling on baseball. And about the effects of multimillion-dollar contracts, which allow players to indulge in physical-fitness regimens that poorly-paid baseballers of yore couldn't afford to pursue in light of their off-season jobs.

Perhaps the most ridiculous reason to begrudge Barry Bonds the career record for home runs is that he's reputed to be a jerk, a sullen, unsociable fellow. Hey, does the name Ty Cobb ring a bell? By all accounts, he was a truly awful person. And how about all the racist players who gave Jackie Robinson a bad time?

So, yeah, go for it, Barry. Baseball somehow will survive the unfairness of it all.

The Rascal sticks his neck out

At considerable risk to my reputation as a political seer non pareil, I'm predicting here that Fred Thompson will not run for the Republican presidential nomination.

Remember where you heard it first -- except if I'm wrong, in which case, I'll delete this post and never admit to having said any such thing.

The tide is rising

More and more newspapers, even such conservative organs as the Detroit Free Press, are editorially calling for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

On other fronts as well, the surge of opinion against the war is growing ever stronger.

If George W. Bush doesn't soon bow to the will of the American people in this matter, the popular demand for his impeachment will become politically irresistible.

If you knew Susie...

Check out Susie Flynn, a 9-year-old who's running for president under the banner of the Children's Defense Fund.

She makes more sense than most of the so-called grown-up candidates.

Twenty-five minutes well spent

Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein (left), a man of impeccable conservative credentials and the author of one of the articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton, makes a good case in this video for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Bill Moyers leads the discussion, which also includes journalist John Nichols.

Smackdown!

(NOTE: I've bumped this post from Tuesday up to this spot so as to give more exposure to the comment attached to it, which arrived only Friday. -- The Rascal.)

Michael Moore gives Wolf Blitzer a little -- nay, a lot -- of what-for on CNN.

Check it out here.

After you watch that video, come on back to check this take on the malarkey peddled by CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

The debate comes down to this

Most of the American people want U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq.

Most members of the U.S. House want the troops withdrawn from Iraq.

Most members of the U.S. Senate want the troops withdrawn from Iraq.

Most of the Iraqi people want U.S. troops withdrawn from their country.

Most nations of the world, including many traditional U.S. allies, want our troops withdrawn from Iraq.

The only obstacle to this goal is the most unpopular American president in more than a generation -- and one of the most unpopular in our nation's history.

That's where America stands today.

UPDATE: The Iraqi prime minister said today that his army and police are capable of handling security in his country and that the United States can withdraw its troops "any time they want." One of his top aides also said that U.S. troops are an embarrassment to the Iraqi government.

Yeah, but we've got to stay the course in Iraq because it's important for George W. Bush's sense of manhood. Dick Cheney's, too. You see, they've got self-esteem issues, especially since both of them ducked service in the Vietnam War, which they otherwise enthusiastically supported.

It's time for Saturday cartoons!

Let's go over to Uncle Bob Geiger's place and check out his weekly collection of political cartoons.

The death of a theocrat

The Rockford Register Star Web site reported today that eminent theologian Harold O.J. Brown died of cancer earlier this month at age 74.

Brown, as the local article notes, was a distinguished scholar and writer and long was associated with a Rockford-based think tank, the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society.

But it also should be remembered that Brown was a theocrat, as he evidenced in a column of a few years back in Christianity Today magazine, in which he suggested, though not in so many words, that the Supreme Court should tailor its rulings to religious scripture rather than to the U.S. Constitution.

The subject at hand was a court decision that struck down laws against consensual sodomy among adults in the privacy of their bedrooms -- and also struck at the heart of Brown's homophobia:

On July 8, 2003, the United States Supreme Court, by a vote of 6-3 (in Lawrence v. Texas) did not merely forget God: It turned the nation into a pagan state -- not the people, of course, not all the lesser structures and institutions such as churches, schools, and businesses great and small, but the nation. The Supreme Court, in declaring all sodomy laws unconstitutional, has in effect declared the nation pagan -- not in so many words, of course, but in terms that explicitly repudiate historic Christianity, the Bible, the Torah, and the principles of natural law that guided us so long.

The Court did not, of course, declare the legislature (i.e. Congress, the administration, the President, and his cabinet) pagan. It could not do so. Congress has Christian members, Catholics and Protestants, and Jewish members, some even observant and orthodox. The President and some members of his administration are Christians, some outspokenly so. But the nation, which has been slowly losing its Christianity, has now been in essence declared pagan, and all its institutions, agencies, and departments will follow, gradually or speedily.

Lawrence passed by a two-thirds majority. What were those justices thinking? The man who wrote the majority opinion is a Roman Catholic. Does he not know that his church, his spiritual leader the pope, the Bible, and all of the church fathers up to the present, consider the behavior that he now protects an abominable sin, an act against nature? Was it a trivial matter to award the highest court's protection to activities against nature and the laws of God and the church? Do the two Jewish justices not know that their Torah rejects sodomy as an abomination? And the two women on the Court: By what perverted logic do they mock the role that God and nature have given to their sex in conjunction with the male -- to bring children into the world in a matrimonial union -- to support this perverse caricature of the purpose of sex and with it the negation of the irreplaceable role of their sex in the survival of our human race? The logic of Lawrence implicitly steers towards the dying off of the human race, or at least of such parts of it as are guided by our high court.

By this tortured reasoning, if we can call it that, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, has been banned from the scene in the nation whose endeavors he has so often blessed. In his place we have, if anything, the gods of Sodom and Gomorrah. The justices, in their sovereign bliss, with the exception of the dissenters, do not seem to know what they have done. Or do they know and not care? Or know and want to do exactly what they have done?

Those of us who do see and know what has been done must not wait until all of the organs of government are brought under the gods of Sodom: We must look, see, and speak. We cannot change the Court's decision, not now and perhaps not ever, but we can and must say with the Israelites of the past, regarding a crime they had not committed, "Our hands have not done this thing [orig. "shed this blood"], nor did our eyes see it … and do not place the guilt … in the midst of thy people Israel" (Deut. 21:7-8).

Which GOP prez hopeful leads in Illinois?

Come on. Ask yourself: Which of the 10 candidates for the Republican presidential nomination (11, if you include Fred Thompson) is ahead in Illinois?

If I didn't already know the answer, I probably would have guessed Thompson. Well, according to this American Research Group poll, it's Rudy Giuliani by nine percentage points over Thompson.

I expect that to change. Yes, yes, I know that Illinois Republicans, on the whole, are a bit more moderate than their brethren nationally (and they're becoming increasingly moderate in the suburbs of Chicago). But Rudy's popularity among the GOP rank-and-file in this state likely will fade as his numbers decline elsewhere, as surely they will.

There's simply no way that this thrice-married, pro-choice, pro-gay New Yorker is going to be the Republican nominee. He'll be an also-ran by Christmas.

The ARG poll results for Illinois in the Democratic race also are a bit surprising, in that favorite son Barack Obama is no better than tied with Hillary Clinton when you factor in the margin of error. But that, too, will change before year's end.

Halberstam goes out in good form

I just got my August issue of Vanity Fair, which features the last piece written by David Halberstam, one of the best journalists of his time, before his death in a car accident in April.

It's about efforts by George W. Bush and his toadies to cast his presidency in a favorable historical light. Read it here.

Religious fanatics disrupt U.S. Senate

I told you last night of the fuss among some right-wing Christians over the news that a Hindu cleric would deliver the opening invocation today in the U.S. Senate.

Well, the invocation was delivered, but only after the cops hauled off several self-described "Christian patriots" who had shouted their disapproval.

It's scary to think that there actually are millions of Americans who want religious freedom only for themselves -- which, of course, isn't freedom at all.

POSTSCRIPT: The virtuous adventures of a few other Christian patriots are reported here.

Has "The Simpsons" lost its magic?

This british guy says it has.

And as one who's been following the family's adventures since they were part of "The Tracey Ullman Show" in the late 1980s, I have to admit that they haven't been as sharp in recent years as they were, say, a decade ago.

But the show is still better than most of the dreck on TV, and I'm hopeful that the movie will be good. I'm bothered, however, by word from one of the producers that "if you've never heard of The Simpsons, you can enjoy the film." I would prefer that the movie key on the well-developed personalities of the supporting characters we've come to know and love over the years.

Oh, well. It isn't all that important, is it? It's only a TV show and a movie.

Hey! Some of that was MY money!

Some bad guys in Iraq have stolen $300 million in American scratch from a bank in Baghdad, and I'm pretty pissed about it.

I distinctly remember giving some of my hard-earned bread to Uncle Sam, and now it's gone.

I mean, I'm just a poor little blogger in Rockford, Ill., and I don't get much in response to my humble little plea (see upper right-hand corner of this screen) for tips. And now some of my dough is missing from some bank in a country where it ought not have been in the first place.

As soon as I'm finished dealing with John McCain (as promised here), I'm going after those guys who stole my money. I'll show them what a real surge looks like.

Firefighters rip Rudy a new one

America's Mayor (so-called) gets a pretty good going-over from the International Association of Firefighters right here. (Click on the middle of the photo of Giuliani on the right-hand side.)

J'accuse!

Turnabout is fair play.

A few weeks ago, John McCain accused The Rascal of illegal behavior (unjustly, I might add).

Well, I'm here today to accuse the senior senator from Arizona of his own illegality. On Tuesday of this week, McCain apparently committed a blatant violation of federal criminal law.

Accordingly, I hereby call upon Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (Oh, God, I forgot that that incompetent little hack is still running the Justice Department) to take appropriate action against McCain.

Or am I going to have to make a citizen's arrest?

UPDATE: Looks like one of McCain's pals also has run afoul of the law.

Yipes! Hindu to deliver prayer in U.S. Senate

The American Family Association, which claims to support religious freedom in America, has got its undies in a bunch over news that a Hindu cleric will deliver the opening invocation tomorrow in the U.S. Senate.

AFA spokesman Buddy Smith says Christians should "hold lawmakers accountable" for this outrageous promotion of paganism.

"I fear that while God has been so merciful with our country in the past, events such as are about to happen, like this in the U.S. Senate, is angering a just God," says Smith. "I fear that we bring judgment upon our country with such acts."

Whoa! I'm going to lie low tomorrow, just in case. I think I'll hide in the basement.

(By the way, be sure to check the comments at the bottom of the AFA article to which a link is provided in the first paragraph above. They're pretty rabid.)

Manzullo votes no on hike in tuition aid

The U.S. House overcame Republican opposition today -- including a negative vote from The Rascal's representative, Don Manzullo (right) -- to pass a record increase in college financial aid.

When Republicans unsuccessfully pushed a procedural amendment aimed at killing the bill, Rep. George Miller gave them this blistering lecture. (Stay with it to its stirring conclusion.)

Now that's the Catholic Church I remember

When The Rascal was growing up in the Catholic Church in the pre-Vatican II days, we had our masses in a language nobody understood, with the priest's back turned to us, and we believed that Protestants were pretty much full of crap.

Pope Benedict XVI seems bent on bringing back those good old days.

This just boggles the mind

Yesterday, we provided this link to coverage of congressional committee testimony from former Surgeon General Richard Carmona about the interference he encountered from Bush administration officials when he tried to do his job.

Today, we ran across a tidbit in the International Herald Tribune about Carmona having been told by Bushies that he shouldn't attend the Special Olympics because -- get this -- it's an event in which the Kennedy family has long been involved.

Said one Bush flunky to Carmona: "Why would you want to help those people?"

The Big Lie

In history and popular culture, The Big Lie usually is defined as a piece of false propaganda, no matter how fantastic, that is repeated over and over in an effort to convince the public that it's true.

George W. Bush resorted to such false propaganda again Tuesday with his claim that al-Qaida in Iraq, an organization that didn't exist before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, is comprised of "the same people that attacked us on September the 11th."

The truth, of course, is that Bush's war is a boon to al-Qaida, not a deterrent.

Sun-Times turning left

The Chicago Sun-Times, which The Rascal has been reading for more years than I care to admit -- and which has varied greatly in quality over the decades -- is now declaring that it's going to be a liberal paper.

That's quite a departure from the days when the demonic Rupert Murdoch (he of Fox News infamy) owned the Sun-Times.

Do Senate Republicans hate our troops?

In light of this, you have to wonder.

The push to impeach Blago is silly

The Rascal hasn't exactly been shy about expressing his dislike of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, as evidenced here and here and here. But let's not be ridiculous.

The nascent movement to impeach Blagojevich, which even has its own Web site, is jumping the gun, to put it mildly. The grounds for impeachment specified on the site amount to nothing more than relatively petty political grievances. There isn't an alleged crime or misdemeanor in the bunch.

The impeachment petition accuses Blago of showing "disrespect for the people of Illinois in misusing tax dollars." That's hardly an unprecedented offense. As I see it, we've never had a governor who didn't misuse tax dollars. Besides, the term "misuse" is subjective. If it amounts to illegality, we've got ways of dealing with that. But the petition makes no such charge.

The petition says Blago "has shown blatant disregard for members of the Legislative branch and their staffs." Well, I'm sorry, but I can't get too worked up about that. A lot of the jugheads in the Legislature deserved to be disregarded. Their staffs, too.

The lamest of the petition's allegations is that the governor hasn't kept "his vow to perform his Executive officer duties with all diligence and seriousness." Come on. That's pretty vague stuff. So, he doesn't work too hard. Is that an impeachable offense? And what is meant by "seriousness"?

Look, the people pushing for impeachment of Blagojevich without evidence of serious wrongdoing -- you know, something at least bordering on the criminal -- are only showing themselves to be politically naive.

Yes, I recognize that federal investigators have been looking into the hiring practices of the Blagojevich administration and perhaps also into a few other matters that might involve the governor or his people. But nothing has yet surfaced that justifies impeachment proceedings.

I can understand people's frustrations with Blago. I've expressed some of my own. But we can't run around impeaching every politician who somehow displeases us. That's no way to run a state government.

Thank God we don't have available to us the recall process they have in California.

You can't get away with slandering The Rascal

John McCain recently implied some bad stuff about The Rascal, and now his presidential campaign is on the brink of death.

That'll teach him!

You won't see this campaign spot on TV

This is a fake ad for Rudy Giuliani. It's politically incorrect and funny in its own outrageous way.

A glimpse of theocratic government

This is scary stuff.

This is too, too delicious!

Is there anything sweeter than a sanctimonious, right-wing, homophobic, family-values, God-fearing Republican getting outed as a whoremonger?

Sen. David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, fessed up last night about having committed "a very serious sin" for which he has "asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife." His contrition is prompted by the revelation that his phone number has shown up in the records of the notorious woman known as the "D.C. Madam."

The depths of Vitter's hypocrisy are charted here by Glenn Greenwald.

Dr. Frank is here

Dr. Frank Newport of the Gallup Poll pays us a visit today to show us the new depths to which President Bush's approval ratings have sunk.

Even one in every three Republicans gives the Great Decider a thumbs down.

The Rascal told you so

More than a month ago, I predicted here that Winnebago County State's Attorney Paul Logli (right), a Republican, would be appointed by Illinois Supreme Court Justice Bob Thomas, another Republican, to a Circuit Court judgeship vacated by Gerald Grubb, yet another Republican.

I further predicted that Logli's deputy state's attorney, Republican Chuck Prorok, would be appointed his successor by the Republican-controlled County Board.

Well, the Rockford Register Star reported today that Logli's judicial appointment by the high court has come through and that he's recommending Prorok as his successor.

So, now Logli gets to run in next year's election as an incumbent judge, and Prorok likely will be able to run as an incumbent state's attorney. Incumbency, of course, traditionally has its electoral advantages.

Such are the politics of the criminal justice system in Winnebago County.

By the way, a reader of the Rockford Rascal has passed along this link to a piece about Logli and law school Professor Alan Hirsch exchanging snarky letters in the Los Angeles Times last year over the issue of prosecutorial misconduct in general and in the alleged Duke University rape case in particular.

Mike Nifong, the prosecutor in the Duke case, has since been disbarred for unethical conduct.

Is Manzullo wrong about the Libby case?

Upon my return the other day from a week of travel, I naturally devoted a little time to catching up on what I had missed in our local paper, the Rockford Register Star. The yield in that regard included this editorial concerning President Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence in the Valerie Plame case.

The piece included a nice statistical summary of pardons and commutations by presidents over the years and quoted Don Manzullo, the local Republican congressman as saying that Bush, with his gesture in the Libby case, "used his legal authority just as President Clinton and every other American president — except Harrison and Garfield — used to commute or pardon people they felt were wrongly convicted or sentenced.”

But there was something about Manzullo's words that vaguely bothered me as I read them. His reference to this "legal authority" under which presidents can "commute or pardon people" seemed unduly devoid of any qualification or limits.

Then, I glanced back to the second sentence of the piece, where the paper's editorial board said the commutation of the Libby sentence was regrettable, "but it is constitutional." Suddenly, that, too, had a vaguely false ring to it.

From the back of my mind came the thought that a president's power to grants pardons and commutations is not, in fact, unlimited. Another thought, however, told me to just let it go. I dreaded the prospect of having to plow through ambiguous legal opinions on the matter just to make some useless point.

But wait! The editorial cited the Constitution, but didn't quote from it. There's the problem, I thought. And sure enough, Article II, Section 2 of our national charter says the president "shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." Except in cases of impeachment.

If the acts of perjury and obstruction of justice for which Scooter Libby was convicted were intended to help guard against the impeachment of his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, then Bush has no constitutional authority to pardon him or commute his sentence.

Most Americans probably know nothing about House Resolution 333, which was introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich in April and calls for impeachment of Cheney. That resolution has been pending since before Libby was sentenced.

Most Americans also probably know nothing about certain remarks federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald made during his final argument to the jury in the Libby trial:

"What is this case about? Is it about something bigger?...There is a cloud over the vice president . . . And that cloud remains because this defendant obstructed justice...There is a cloud over the White House. Don't you think the FBI and the grand jury and the American people are entitled to straight answers?"

Well, whether Don Manzullo realizes it or not, we now have cause to wonder whether Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence was intended to secure Libby's continued silence on matters that could lead to the impeachment of Cheney or even the president himself. (After all, a prison stretch might give Libby reason to rethink his options.)

Hence, we also have cause to wonder whether Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence was constitutional after all.

Is Bush finally facing the music on Iraq?

In Monday's edition of The New York Times, it's reported that senior Bush administration officials, faced with a growing rebellion among Senate Republicans over the war in Iraq, are considering strategies for a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The paper says that such talks previously had been expected no sooner than September when military commanders and U.S. diplomats in Iraq are scheduled to report on the war situation, but the deteriorating political situation in Washington and across the country have made discussions more urgent.

Senate Democrats, emboldened perhaps by growing public pressure for impeachment of both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and by increasing unrest among Republicans over the war, are likely to make a new push this week for troop-withdrawal timetables.

This is shaping up as Bush's summer of discontent, and it's not yet three weeks old.

Preacher's flock gives him hell

In this story, a guy uses his God-given brain -- and gets banished by the self-righteous for daring to do so.

Be sure to check the comments at the bottom of the story. Some of them are doozies.

Why does Fox News hate Mister Rogers?

The cable news network that finds itself on the wrong side of almost everything (the Bush presidency, the Iraq war, et al) is now suggesting that Mister Rogers is bad for America's kids -- even four years after his death.

Is it any wonder that regular watchers of the Fox News Channel are not very knowledgeable on national affairs?

OK, here's the video

I should have included this with the post below on "Born in the USA."

"Born in the USA" is not a patriotic anthem

The Rascal was in Minocqua, Wis., on the Fourth of July and witnessed the town's annual parade, which characteristically included some floats and units that seemed to have nothing whatever to do with our nation's birthday.

I mean, in this context, what's the point of a marching contingent of real estate agents from Coldwell Banker? Or earth-moving equipment from a local construction company?

The most incongruous element in the parade -- but not uncommon among Independence Day celebrations all across the land -- was a vehicle adorned with loud speakers blaring Bruce Springsteen's recording of "Born in the USA."

Countless Americans seem to think that Springsteen's song, which was released in 1984 and has been a staple of Fourth of July doings ever since, is overtly patriotic. It's not. It's the sarcastic lament of an embittered Vietnam vet who can't find work when he comes home from the war and ends up in prison.

Here are the lyrics:

Born down in a dead man's town

The first kick I took was when I hit the ground

You end up like a dog that's been beat too much

Till you spend half your life just covering up, now

Born in the USA, I was

Born in the USA, I was

Born in the USA

Born in the USA, now

Got in a little hometown jam

So they put a rifle in my hands

Sent me off to a foreign land,

To go and kill the yellow man

Born in the USA, I was

Born in the USA, I was

Born in the USA, I was

Born in the USA

Come back home to the refinery

Hiring man said "Son if it was up to me"

Went down to see my VA man,

He said "Son don't you understand now"

I had a brother at Khe Sahn, fighting off the Viet Cong

They're still there, he's all gone

He had a woman who lived in Saigon,

I got a picture of him in her arms,

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary

Out by the gas fires of the refinery

I'm ten years burning down the road

Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go

Born in the USA, I was

Born in the USA, now

Born in the USA,

I'm a long-gone daddy in the USA, now

Born in the USA, Born in the USA, Born in the USA,

I'm a cool rockin' daddy in the USA, now

It's time for Saturday cartoons, Kiddies!

The Rascal is back from his Fourth of July break, just in time for a visit with Uncle Bob Geiger for a look at his collection of political cartoons.

Sign of the times

I saw a guy in his driveway yesterday peeling a "Bush/Cheney 04" bumper sticker off the back of his SUV, and I almost was tempted to stop and ask if this was a sign of a rat leaving a sinking ship. But I thought better of it.

I don't expect that the erstwhile Bush loyalists who only now are giving up on him are in good humor these days. They probably have felt isolated and politically out of touch with the American mainstream over these recent days and months.

And the situation for Bush is only getting worse. The latest CBS poll has his approval rating at an all-time low and shows that a solid majority of Americans want to see a reduction in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq or a complete withdrawal. The results are much the same in all the other polls, even the one sponsored by Fox News, the pro-Bush channel.

Bush's only hope for even a little political gain in the near future rests on the chance that some folks might begin to feel sorry for him. But there's not likely to be much of even that.

It's Saturday morning cartoon time!

Let's go over to Uncle Bob Geiger's place, kids, and check out his weekly collection of political cartoons.

Uh-oh! They say The Rascal's a naughty boy

I went over to this Web site (H/T to What's Left in the Church) to get a decency rating on my blog, and they gave me this NC-17 thing.

It's unfair, I tell you. I've never dropped an F-bomb or said anything really obscene or profane. Okay, there's been the occasional S-word and B-S word and A-hole-word. But c'mon! I'm not running a Sunday school here.

Well, hell. If they're gonna rate me NC-17, I might as well let loose. Just you wait!

Run for your lives!

Scientists have discovered mysterious clouds (pictured above) creeping out of the Arctic and threatening us with who-knows-what.

The Rascal, ordinarily a brave sort, is scared witless and hereby repents all his sins (but doesn't necessarily vow to commit no more of them, especially if this cloud thing blows over).

Chi Trib spotlights The Rascal's hometown

Today's edition of the Chicago Tribune has a feature piece on the revival of pretzels in Freeport, Ill., which calls itself Pretzel City USA (and which is less noted as the birthplace of The Rascal).

Actually, Freeport's greatest claim to fame is as the site of the second and historically most important of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Which raises the question of whether the town is preparing anything special for next year's 150th anniversary of that debate.

Obama says ixnay on impeachment, but he wouldn't have a vote on the matter anyway

Barack Obama said Thursday that he's against any move to impeach either George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, despite their administration's "loose ethical standards...secrecy and incompetence."

Obama added that he thinks "you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breaches, and intentional breaches of the president's authority. I believe if we began impeachment proceedings, we will be engulfed in more of the politics that has made Washington dysfunctional. We would once again, rather than attending to the people's business, be engaged in a tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, non-stop circus."

The Rascal, too, has been reluctant to advocate impeachment of Bush, at least thus far, but I'm not so sure about Cheney. And I think cases can be made -- indeed, several officially have been made -- for frog-marching some administration officials off to the pokey.

But let's not forget that Obama, as a senator, would have no formal say in whether Bush or Cheney are impeached. Impeachment is a matter to be decided only by the House of Representatives. Senators decide only whether to convict a person who's been impeached.

Bill Clinton, you'll recall, was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate.

POSTSCRIPT: Impeached or not, Bush finds himself in deep doo-doo, as noted here.

Well, there goes the dog-lover vote

The Rascal ordinarily doesn't make a big deal about certain non-political matters on the presidential campaign trail -- you know, stuff like $400 haircuts and such.

But this one's a worthy exception. This one has the potential to strike an emotional chord with animal lovers in general and dog lovers in particular.

And what with me being Irish and all, I feel a strong ethnic tie to this story.

UPDATE (Friday, June 29): More fallout from this story here.

Just another biased poll from the liberal media

No, wait! It's a Fox News poll. Can this be?

Wow! This, too, is from the Fox poll.

Isn't it strange how there's nothing about this on the Drudge Report? But then, Drudge often prefers bogus polls to the real thing, as we've noted here and here (the links on this latter one, by the way, now lead only to dry holes or irrelevant materials; the embarrassed offenders apparently have long since taken down the bad stuff).

Is this guy whipped or what?

President Bush seemed disturbingly stunned and breathless today in responding to the death of immigration-reform legislation in the Senate.

(H/T to Talking Points Memo.)

I knew this would happen

The Rascal, prescient as usual, had nothing to say the other day when the rest of the political world was all atwitter over Republican Sen. Richard Lugar's celebrated about-face on the issue of the war in Iraq.

My take on the matter was that Lugar, who's ordinarily no more given to political boldness than Dick Cheney is to serious constitutional scholarship, would back away from his apostasy once he found a horse's head in his bed courtesy of his party's henchmen.

Well, the head apparently has been delivered, and Lugar has backed off a bit. No matter his rhetoric on the Senate floor this past Monday, he now says he shan't be voting for any deadlines or any other such Democratic notions on how to end the conflict.

Still, the man's unbosoming of his doubts about the wisdom of staying the course in Iraq has served the salutary purpose of gaining headlines and advancing the perception that Republicans are becoming ever more unsettled about this stupid war.

So, thanks for that, Senator, if nothing else.

Rockford-area GOPer joins Obama lovefest

First it was Illinois State Sen. Kirk Dillard who raised eyebrows among his fellow Republicans by appearing in a TV commercial for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

Now we're getting comments from Republican State Sen. Todd Sieben, whose district lies just west of Rockford, about how Obama "has the intelligence, he has the passion, he has the legislative and now congressional experience as a senator to do the job" as president.

Sieben goes so far as to say that Obama has what it takes to rank historically with the other three presidents with connections to Illinois -- Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Ronald Reagan.

"I think he has that potential," says Sieben.

Oh, my!

The three (or four) branches of the federal government are not co-equal

The hubub of late over Vice President Dick Cheney's notion that he's a separate branch of government unto himself has given rise to lots of talk about the "co-equal" status of the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

You'll hear no such nonsense from The Rascal. No, I'm not taking Cheney's side in this matter. I, too, consider his posturing ridiculous. My disagreement, however, doesn't rest on any of this fiction about "co-equal" branches of government.

Four months ago, I noted here that the Founding Fathers did not create a system of co-equal branches of government. Rather, they intended for the legislative branch to be dominant, as is evidenced in the Federalist Papers and even in some of the arguments against ratification of the Constitution from people who would have preferred co-equal branches.

You'd think that my admonition in this regard would have settled the matter among all concerned. But, alas, too many people have not paid sufficient attention to me, which is not only personally galling but also deleterious to the cause of domestic tranquility in our great nation.

Global-warming skeptics get suckered

It's amazing what some people will seize upon in the debate over global warming.

Take, for instance, something that happened today:

The Drudge Report posted a link this morning under the headline: "Survey finds 71 % of people believe global warming 'natural occurence.'" In a flash, global-warming skeptics across the fruited plain clicked on the link and nearly soiled themselves in delight at the story they found on a British Web site.

Wow! Not only did 71 percent of respondents say that global warming is just natural stuff and isn't caused by humans, but 65 percent said the scare stories about the big environmental risks facing us are "far-fetched."

Glory be! The tide, it seems, has turned. People are waking up to the lies about global warming spread by those terrible liberals and that awful Al Gore and all those pointy-headed scientists.

The bloggers among the global-warming doubters who followed Drudge's link to this story began banging on their keyboards with great glee so as to spread the word. A guy named Kevin Tracy was one of them. A guy named Fritz Hereid was another. A guy named Tony Spain happily intrepreted the poll results as applying to people in general, not just the Brits.

In the next few days, word of this earth-shaking poll is likely to spread from sea to shining sea and far beyond.

But wait! There's...uh...one little problem. That survey of 4,000 people was conducted online. That means the respondents were self-selected. And that means the poll was worthless. You see, any poll that isn't conducted by time-tested scientific methods is ipso facto pure crapola, if you know what I mean.

Okay then, let's look at what the scientifically reliable polls are saying about global warming and how people feel about it. Well, gee, what a surprise! The results are completely different from those of the bogus poll touted on the Drudge Report. They show that clear majorities see global warming as a real problem and think it's been caused mostly by humans and want the government to do something about it.

Of course, these respectable polls only cover Americans. That other poll, the crappy one, apparently covers just British folks (although the story isn't really clear on that point). But then, it doesn't matter who's covered by the crappy poll. After all, crappy is crappy, right?

By the way, Kevin and Fritz and Tony might want to post corrections on their blogs. The Rascal will check back after a while to see if they've done so.

UPDATE: Peddlers of the bogus poll are multiplying like rabbits throughout the blogosphere -- here and here and here and here and here and here.

UPDATE II: The online poll at issue can be found here. Not only is it unscientific, but it's also skewed by skeptical statements about global warming.

UPDATE III: By the way, in a Harris poll earlier this year, global warming was blamed on governments, industries and people in general by 55 percent of British respondents, 61 percent of Spanish, 56 percent of French, 54 percent of Germans and Italians and 59 percent of Americans.

Would this roil the Republican Party or what?

Sally Quinn writes this in today's Washington Post about rumors that Dick Cheney will be ousted from the vice presidency on a health-issue pretext and replaced by actor-presidential candidate Fred Thompson.

How's that going to sit with Romney, Giuliani, McCain and the others vieing for the GOP presidential nod? Not well, I would think.

Illinois GOPer appears in Obama ad

Republican State Senator Kirk Dillard of Hinsdale is probably going to get a lot of grief from his party mates over his appearance in this TV commercial for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

UPDATE: Dillard's been saying nice things about Obama all over the place.

The 100 best movies?

Random notes on the American Film Institute's 10th anniversary list of the 100 best movies:

The first thing to understand here is that "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" wasn't even among the 400 nominated movies from which the top 100 were selected. Consequently, the entire exercise is bogus.

"Singing in the Rain," at No. 5, is way overrated. Without the great title-song scene, the film wouldn't even belong on the list.

"Vertigo," ranked No. 9, is one of Alfred Hitchcock's worst films. "I Confess," in which Montgomery Clift plays a priest and Karl Malden a cop, is far, far better. But, like "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," it wasn't on the list of 400 nominees.

"Some Like it Hot," No. 22, is the most overrated comedy ever made.

"Easy Rider," No. 84, was considered hip when it came out (and then, only if you were stoned when you saw it). Today, it's embarrassing. It's noteworthy only for the breakthrough performance by Jack Nicholson.

"Blade Runner," No. 97, doesn't deserve to be in the top 1,000 films, let alone the top 100.

Besides "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and "I Confess," here are a few other glaring omissions (randomly selected and any one of which was better than a dozen or more of the flicks that made the top 100 list):

"The Adventures of Robin Hood," "Stalag 17," "Bambi," "My Man Godfrey," "Dr. Zhivago," "Evita," "Sense and Sensibility," "Reds," "Five Easy Pieces," "The Right Stuff," "Paths of Glory," "How Green Was My Valley," "Gentlemen's Agreement." I could name scores more.

But, hey, it's all subjective. And as pianist Arthur Rubinstein once said, "Nothing in art is the best."

McCain slanders The Rascal; lawyers alerted

On several occasions in recent months, The Rascal has predicted that John McCain eventually will drop his hopeless bid for the Republican presidential nomination, and I still think he will.

But McCain struck back today, declaring that anybody who dares suggest that he'll quit the campaign has been "smoking something stronger than is legal..."

Well, I'm not going to take that kind of slander lying down. No, sir. The Arizona senator's rhetoric in this matter is outrageous, and he's going to be held to account for it.

If McCain has evidence that I've written disparaging things about him while under the influence of anything stronger than V-8, I'd like to see it. So would the countless admirers of this blog who visit here regularly for a political-wisdom fix (if I might use that drug-culture term in this context).

I'm currently conferring with lawyers from the firm of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe (whose clients have included Johnny Carson and the Marx Brothers), and we're contemplating legal action. You haven't heard the last of this.

Newcomer to Rascal's Favorites

The wits at Comedy Central, those wonderful folks who bring you the brilliant political slants of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on cable TV, have come up with a new political Web site, Indecision 2008.

The site promises: "Something approximating election news with something approximating honesty."

That's good enough for us.

You'll find a link to Indecision 2008 among Rascal's Favorites on the right-hand side of our own award-winning and widely-esteemed blog.