Ah, good old Alan Keyes

Those of us in Illinois -- and especially here in Rockford -- have a perspective on Alan Keyes that the rest of America can scarcely appreciate.

Keyes was our Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate back in '04. He was recruited by Rockford State Sen. Dave Syverson, among others, when the winner of the GOP primary had to drop out in a sex scandal.

Keyes didn't even live in Illinois, but the Republican poohbahs seemed to figure that their own articulate black guy could fare well against Barack Obama, so they got him to move here from Maryland.

The result was a disaster. Keyes said his candidacy was "God's will," and opined that Jesus Christ wouldn't vote for Obama. He referred to Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter as "a selfish hedonist" and otherwise condemned homosexuals as evil.

Keyes quickly became a statewide joke and ended up with only 27 percent of the vote.

But lately, if you haven't noticed, Keyes has imposed himself on the hapless field of Republican presidential hopefuls in the 2008 race. His presence, not surprisingly, has been greeted disdainfully by conservative pundits who once regarded him with more fondness.

Roy Edroso surveys the situation here.

Too much Freud from a guy named Dick

This is funny.

(By the way, you can write your own caption for the photo here of Dick Cheney.)

Bush's bogus case for war with Iran

Ray McGovern, a retired CIA officer and now an executive with a church-affiliated publishing venture, warns that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are hell-bent for war against Iran.

George Orwell would be proud

More than two years ago, Dick Cheney told America that the insurgency in Iraq was in its "last throes."

The gullible among us drank that Kool-Aid and stood behind the Bush administration's war policy, only to see it sink us deeper into a quagmire.

Accordingly, most folks aren't buying such rosy scenarios anymore, but the hawks are still out there peddling them.

This guy, for example, has an Orwellian pitch. He wants us to believe that signs of setback actually are signs of progress. Losing should be seen as winning. Down is up. Bad is good. The worst bloodbath of the war is proof that the bad guys are on their way out.

Sure it is.

Well, well, well. What have we here?

Why, it's a video of Dick Cheney from back in 1994 explaining that the first President Bush was right to have avoided getting bogged down in a "quagmire" in Iraq and that the U.S. casualties that would have been sustained in overthrowing Saddam Hussein in the first gulf war would not have been worth it.

For a guy who looks as if he talks out of only one side of his mouth, Cheney actually has a record of talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Have you ever heard Bush sing?

Well, here's your chance. Dick Cheney and Karl Rove also lend their vocal talents to this effort.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Abba cadabra

This video is exceedingly clever.

The music, of course, is great. And the lyrics uncannily suit the images.

Don't pass by this one.

(H/T to firedoglake.)

Oh my!

Isn't this child abuse?

"Pro-family" busybodies are disgusting!

The Religious Right declares itself deeply offended by the official White House photo of Dick and Lynne Cheney and the infant son of their lesbian daughter, Mary.

These people have a lot of nerve calling themselves "pro-family." There should be a special place in hell for their sort.