Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, July 1, 2007 “I miss Albania!” W. wails. “They know how to treat a president there. Women were kissing me and men rubbed my hair. The crowd kept yelling, ‘Bushie!,’ and they almost grabbed the watch right off my wrist trying to get at me.” The concerned group huddling outside the president’s closed-bedroom door in Kennebunkport can barely hear him. His voice is muffled because he has his face buried in his feather pillow, which the Secret Service has carefully transported from Washington to Maine for the weekend, knowing that it would be needed. They guard it so conscientiously that they have even given it a code name. Since the president’s Secret Service name is Tumbler, his agents christened his beloved pillow Slumber. “Son, I know how you feel,” Poppy calls in to him, trying to sound positive. “Riding high in 2002, shot down in 2007. That’s life, as Sinatra says. You were a puppet and a pawn to King Dick and it screwed up your presidency and our party and the Middle East and the Atlantic alliance and the family legacy and Jeb’s future, not to mention the fate of the planet. But you can’t just roll yourself up in a big ball and die, George. Your friend Vlad the Impaler is here, and I think you should come out and talk to him. You invited him and he came all the way from Russia, and you don’t want to be rude. “I’ve already taken him to Mabel’s Lobster Claw and out on the boat. He scared all the fish away. I don’t know what else to do with him, George. He brained the Filipino manservant, the little brown one, with a horseshoe.” Read More Here

Frank Rich, The New York Times, July 1, 2007 Who knew that mocking the Constitution could be nearly as funny as shooting a hunting buddy in the face? Among other comic dividends, Dick Cheney’s legal theory that the vice president is not part of the executive branch yielded a priceless weeklong series on “The Daily Show” and an online “Doonesbury Poll,” conducted at Slate, to name Mr. Cheney’s indeterminate branch of government. The ridicule was so widespread that finally even this White House had to blink. By midweek, it had abandoned that particularly ludicrous argument, if not its spurious larger claim that Mr. Cheney gets a free pass to ignore rules regulating federal officials’ handling of government secrets. That retreat might allow us to mark the end of this installment of the Bush-Cheney Follies but for one nagging problem: Not for the first time in the history of this administration — or the hundredth — has the real story been lost amid the Washington kerfuffle. Once the laughter subsides and you look deeper into the narrative leading up to the punch line, you can unearth a buried White House plot that is more damning than the official scandal. This plot once again snakes back to the sinister origins of the Iraq war, to the Valerie Wilson leak case and to the press failures that enabled the administration to abuse truth and the law for too long. One journalist who hasn’t failed is Mark Silva of The Chicago Tribune. He first reported more than a year ago, in May 2006, the essentials of the “news” at the heart of the recent Cheney ruckus. Mr. Silva found that the vice president was not filing required reports on his office’s use of classified documents because he asserted that his role in the legislative branch, as president of the Senate, gave him an exemption. Read More Here

Dear Liberals, I want to thank those of you who pushed to kill the amnesty bill. George Bush (who I voted for twice) and his little friends, including Ted Kennedy, John McCain, and Dianne Feinstein, want open borders. They want dirt cheap labor, a dependent subclass, and ignorant voters, no matter the cost to you and me. They are wrong, ugly wrong. Perhaps senators in favor of this amnesty bill hadn’t taken the time away from their cocktails to look through it. No excuse. You did the right thing rather than the politically correct thing. The architects of this bill, including the aforementioned, have proved themselves to be dishonest in trying to push it through the Senate before people could become aware of it. They don’t have your interests at heart. Thank God for the internet and talk radio. Without these they could have succeeded. But instead you were there. You joined the conservatives and this sneak attack on our national sovereignty (which consists of language, borders, and culture) failed miserably. Without you this would not have happened. Please accept my sincere gratitude. Grimgold

The right-side of the Supreme Court decided against the First Amendment recently in the Morse v. Frederick [06-278] case. I'm not a lawyer of course, but I do still possess common sense - something the black-robed boys don't. There are two parts to this decision I find unacceptable. First, the court found that the Olympic Torch run was a school-sanctioned and school-supervised event. Basically, the school let the students out to watch the runners carry the torch through town. That's now a school-sanctioned and supervised event. Seems a bit of a stretch to me. However, had they not found that the school was "supervising" the event (which, of course they really weren't) then they could never handed down the rest of their idiotic decision. Holding that this was a school event raises a host of issues that no one seems to have addressed yet. I'm curious as to the instructions students were given when they were allowed to leave school. The individual in question was not on school property when the incident happened. Was he really being supervised by his teachers? Or was that just a convenient argument after the fact? Does any student action during school hours now become "supervised" by the school? What if the banner was a bumper-sticker on the student's car? One can hardly argue that school parking lots are not school supervised. Let's turn to the actual decision now. The boys on the right of the court (by right, I do not mean correct) decided to change 40-plus years of policy. In 1965 the court held that a silent, non-disruptive protest against the Viet Nam war could not be squelched. They correctly decided then that the students' free speech did not conflict with the school's mission. In that case, the students were protesting on school property. Given the passions for and against the war I think one could have reasonably expected even a slient protest could erupt into an altercation. Fast-forward forty-two years. Now the court says the act of holding up a banner that says "Bong Hits for Jesus" on a sidewalk across from campus during a sort of parade can be squelched by school officials. And people say we're becoming MORE LIBERAL???? The court held that the banner promoted illegal drug use and, therefore, the school principal was justified in taking the banner and suspending the student who was responsible. I think it is obvious this decision is a bow the the right-wing's losing "War on Drugs." They cannot face the reality that they cannot legislate every facet of individuals' lives - from who they sleep with to whether or not they control their own bodies and have children, or ingest drugs. Seriously! Get a clue righties and accept human nature. Prohibition didn't work. It just helped create some of the biggest mafia machines around. The court chose to ignore the fact a bong is just a simple water pipe. They can be used for smoking legal substances too. So if the banner said "Hookah Hits for Jesus" would that have been okay? How about "Tequila Shots for Jesus?" Or perhaps "Jesus Sucks" or "Bush Sucks?" And, again, what if it was a bumper-sticker on his car and not a banner? Now those idiots have opened a huge can of worms. Where do you draw the line? When is a message something a school can prohibit and under what circumstances? I'd say we're about to find out. This decision will embolden school administrators to test the limits of their powers. Some will undoubtedly try to prohibit speech they personally do not like but that is not offensive, obscene or promotes illegal activities. Others will probably make good decisions. In either case we might start seeing a lot more cases like this one until the boundaries are more clearly defined.

Tony Hendra, The Huffington Post, June 30, 2007 There was a party atmosphere at the end of the Supreme Court's session yesterday. A jubilant rightwing majority, represented by Justice Alito, made three dramatic announcements concerning the future makeup and direction of the court: A. Effective immediately the Supreme Court will be renamed the Supremacist Court of the United States. The vote to rename was 5-4. B. The first obligation of the Supremacist Court declared Justice Alito was resegregation. A colorblind Court should never elevate jurists to its bench simply by reason of their color. Since Justice Thomas had undeniably been nominated by George Bush Sr. because of his race: A. to fill the seat vacated by Thurgood Marshall and B. to dare the Democrats to reject him after their rejection of Robert Bork, he should be removed forthwith from the bench. Justice Thomas fully concurred citing 'extensive and incontrovertible evidence' that the Framers' 'original intent' had been an all-white all-male Court. "The idea that a black man can sit on this bench purely by virtue of his race is beyond outrageous - it is laughable. Imagine the Framers' condoning such an absurdity..." He went on to entertain the court with an impersonation of an 18th century African-American "perhaps one of my own slave ancestors from Georgia" sitting beside Chief Justice John Jay at the Court's opening session in 1790. Read More Here