Month: March 2007

I Was Born Yesterday

by digby

I know that the cognoscenti think all this talk about politicization of the Justice Department is silly Claud Rainsing on the part of cynical Democratic partisans, but when you see things like this, you have to realize how ugly this US Attorney scandal really is:

Today, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog Democracy 21 sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty asking whether there had been political interference in the investigation and prosecution of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

I hadn’t even thought about that up to now — I guess I’m just another of those fools who believed that professional US Attorneys, even ambitious Republican ones, would neither risk their reputations nor the public’s faith in the rule of law by helping cover up the vast network of GOP corruption. It never occurred to me that the political arm of the Justice Department would have the balls to interfere in such high profile cases for fear of a revolt from the US Attorney’s themselves. I assumed that the wheels of justice moved slowly and that if they didn’t indict high profile political figures it was because the cases were too murky and would risk a very public failure.

Then came the firings and we find that throughout the country these Republican prosecutors have been targeting Democrats. (And we can speculate as Christy at FDL does here on the possible method to their madness.) I now realize that I honestly did not think that even this criminal administration would go so far as to allow Karl Rove to have a hand in the Justice department and I never considered that US Attorney’s were doing his bidding.

Why I was so naive, I do not know. Tom Delay, after all, is still free. I guess I still thought that there were certain limits, even for this administration.

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Cure For Amnesia

by digby

Tony Snow is saying that there’s simply no reason for Rove and Miers to go under oath or even a transcript of their “interview” to be created if the congress really wants to get the truth.

He had no information on the “18 Day Gap” and seems not to be aware that Karl Rove just recently came within a hairs breadth of being indicted for lying to the FBI and and perjuring himself before a Grand Jury. See, he apparently has a terrible disease that renders him an amnesiac until he’s facing indictment, at which point he suddenly uncovers e-mails which jog his memory and he “amends” his statements.

Getting the truth from this disabled fellow in simple interviews has already proven to be a big waste of time. Better to just put him under penalty of perjury from the beginning. Recent history shows that he can barely remember his name unless he’s facing jail time.

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Turtles and Bugmen

by digby

David Gregory says that he had been under the impression all day that the president was going to handle this press conference by saying that he knew mistakes had been made but that he was hopeful that the Democrats would work with the white house in good faith, blah, blah blah.

Apparently, however, the Republicans had a meeting today that showed a split in the GOP with half the members saying that Bush should dump Abu G, while others, notably the Box Turtle Cornyn (and Tom Delay on TV this morning) told Bush there was no margin in being accommodating and that Bush should “fight” which I’m sure sounded like music to his puerile little ears. It makes him feel like a man.

You can never go wrong telling Bush to act like an ass. He’s the Dad Who Is Always Mad — and it’s just this type of manipulation and advice that’s gotten him — and this nation — into the trouble we’re all in today.

Meanwhile, virtually all the reporters on NBC seem to not know that numerous very close white house advisors were hauled before congress during the Clinton administration. Can’t somebody get them an intern?

Or maybe we could just send them this, from Think Progress today:

According to the Congressional Research Service, under President Clinton, 31 of his top aides testified on 47 different occasions. The aides who testified included some of Clinton’s closest advisors:

Harold Ickes, Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff – 7/28/94

George Stephanopoulos, Senior Adviser to the President for Policy and Strategy – 8/4/94

John Podesta, Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary – 8/5/94

Bruce R. Lindsey, Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President – 1/16/96

Samuel Berger, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs – 9/11/97

Beth Nolan, Counsel to the President – 5/4/00

In contrast, between 2000 and 2004, Bush allowed only one of his closest advisers, then-Assistant to the President for Homeland Security Tom Ridge, to appear in front of Congress. He has also refused three invitations from Congress for his aides to testify, a first since President Richard Nixon in 1972. Clinton did not refuse any.

Gee, I’m tired of MSM incompetence (or bias.)

Update: Greenwald has a post up on executive privilege, illustrated with all the GOP rending of garments over Clinton’s attempts (and failure) to claim executive privilege when Ken Starr was trying to rummage through his underwear in the Lewinsky scandal. It’s especially rich to see Tony Snow’s editorials on the subject.

I wonder if there’s any chance in hell that an intrepid member of the White House press corps reads his blog and gets up the nerve ask the Snowman about it tomorrow.

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King Leonides Lives

by digby

Wow, let’s party like it’s 2002 and pretend President Pissypants has an 80% approval rating! He won’t stand for the congress “acting inappropriately” by subpoenaing members of the white house. He says he hopes they don’t keep wasting his time with “showtrials” because he’s offered a “reasonable proposal” (to allow Karl Rove to lie his ass off in private.) When asked if Gonzales could function since he doesn’t seem to have much support, he hit back hard with “he has stong support with ME!” Ssss-nap!

He is, by the way, only doing this to protect future presidents, which is very generous of him. And he feels sorry that this has bubbled up to the surface, because it’s hard on those (incredible loser) US Attorneys, but that’s Washington for you, (inadvertantly reminding everyone that he spends most of his time clearing brush in Crawford.)

Wolf says he was very, very strong and very, very tough and something about the president’s pleasure and … oooh baby. If he’d had on a loin cloth and a nice mullet his testosterone-addled cartoon manliness would have been right out of “300.” Too bad King Codpiece’s toothless little tirades are about as convincing as Village People machismo these days.

I suspect that many Americans are saying, “is he still here?”

Update: Atrios says:

Any executive privilege claims can only theoretically potentially limit the scope of questioning, not prevent them from testifying at all. Working for the president doesn’t give you magic immunity from everything.

Well, now, that’s not exactly true. Nixon said, when the president does it, “it’s not illegal.” And in Bush’s case, it’s only slightly modified to say “when the president’s brain does it, it’s not illegal.” Clinton’s closest aides were called up 47 times and testified under oath. But that, of course, was completely different.

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Disciplining The Help

by digby

You wonder why populism (or revolution) seems to arise with regularity and then you read something like this, from Yglesias:

“Why are low-skilled men withdrawing from work just when unskilled jobs appear plentiful and immigrants are flooding into the country to take them?” asks Lawrence Mead who answers, “male work discipline has deteriorated. Poor men want to work and succeed, yet many cannot endure the slights and disappointments that work involves. That’s why poor men usually can obtain jobs yet seldom keep them.”

[…]

Rather than suggest, however, that low-skill men would be more inclined to favor formal employment were formal employment rendered more attractive through, e.g., higher pay or more dignified working conditions, Mead suggests — really — that we deploy the coercive apparatus of the criminal justice system in order to mold such men into a more readily pliant worker class. “Nonworking men deserve to earn more,” Mead concedes, “but they also must be required to work, as they seldom are today.”

Fine, as long as every “skilled” worker is required to spend at least two years working in a low-end job being treated like a lackey for no money. Call it a right of passage and requirement of citizenship. If they do that and come out at the other end still talking about how low wage workers just need “discipline” and how they cannot endure “slights” then I guess they will have proven how superior they are. But I will bet that it would only take a week or two before most of these effete, spoiled brats would have a very hard time finding any reason to get up in the morning .

Creating greater and greater income inequality, increasing the pressure on the underclass and using law enforcement to coerce citizens in dead-end jobs to have “discipline” is an excellent way to to have a stable, thriving society, all right. After all, it worked so awfully well in the past.

I find it hard to believe we have to have these discussions all over again as if they’ve just discovered the concept of “character flaws” in the “lower classes.” Welcome to 1896. Or 1796. Maybe people like Meed should spend less time lecturing about “discipline” and more time thinking and reading about what low level, mindless work does to the human spirit. Perhaps this novel might shed some light on the subject. It was written over a century ago but since we seem to have to relearn everything we’ve ever learned from scratch, maybe it could save some time. (Even just this chapter might be of help.)

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How Droll

by digby

I was going to take on Michael Kinsley’s obtuse observations on the US Attorney scandal, but I see that Kevin Drum has done a fine job of it already. He does everyone a service by spelling out for cynical observers like Kinsley what the big deal is:

This is beyond maddening, as if Kinsley is deliberately trying to misunderstand what’s going on here. Look: the only serious argument that Purgegate is a scandal is related to the reason for the Pearl Harbor Day massacre. If seven U.S. Attorneys were fired that day for poor performance, that would be fine. If they were fired for insufficient commitment to Bush administration policies, that would be fine too. But there’s considerable reason to believe that at least some of them were fired because either (a) they were too aggressive about investigating Republican corruption or (b) they weren’t aggressive enough about investigating Democrats. That’s it. That’s the argument. David Iglesias: Didn’t bring indictments against some local Democrats prior to the 2006 election. John McKay: Failed to invent voter fraud cases that might have prevented a Democrat from winning the 2004 governor’s race in Washington. Carol Lam: Doing too good a job prosecuting trainloads of Republicans in the wake of the Duke Cunningham scandal. Daniel Bogden and Paul Charlton: In the midst of investigations targeting current or former Republican members of Congress when they were fired. And this all comes against a background that suggests the Bush Justice Department has initiated fantastically more investigations of Democrats than Republicans over the past five years. All of this, combined with the “volleys of lies” coming at us machine gun style from one Bush administration figure after another, strikes me as a pretty good reason to be deeply suspicious.

Although there wasn’t any fellatio involved (that we know of) this leads to a suspicion that somebody was obstructing justice, which last I heard was still a crime.

And anyway, we already know certain things about this White House that should always give one pause:

“There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus,” says DiIulio. “What you’ve got is everything—and I mean everything—being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”

[…]

Sources in the West Wing, echoing DiIulio’s comments, say that even cursory discussion of domestic policy became much less frequent after September 11, 2001, with the exception of Homeland Security. Meanwhile, the department of “Strategery,” or the “Strategery Group,” depending on the source, has steadily grown. The term, coined in 2000 by Saturday Night Live’s Will Ferrell, started as a joke at the White House, too, but has actually become a term of art meaning the oversight of any activity—from substantive policy to ideological stance to public event—by the president’s political thinkers.

When you have an administration like this, you default to the assumption that their decisions were purely political so when those decisions affect the Justice Department you look deeper unless you want the US Attorney’s office to be seen as a political arm of the executive branch (in which case whatever respect for the rule of law that remains in this country is thrown out with the garbage.) This is serious and the fact that Kinsley and others seem to find it oh-so-dull is part of the problem with political culture in this country.

Yes, it’s stupid when people make a big deal out of presidential blow jobs or trump up conspiracy theories about Vince Foster. No it isn’t stupid when people make a big deal out of using the Justice Department as a political enforcer or recognize that government officials lied about their plans for war. I’m not sure why this is so difficult to understand.

Update: I spoke too soon about the blow jobs. You won’t believe this one.

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Blame Americans First Republicans

by digby

Glenn has a must read post up today about the extremely irritating MSM habit of illustrating rightwing talking points with anecdotes (usually helpfully supplied by some wingnut operative with a juicy angle.)

At the end of the post he highlights a Michael Barone column in which Barone makes all kinds of blanket assertions about a group of people whom he never names but which he implies are vast in number and, naturally, are liberals. Barone says:

“They always blame America first.” That was Jeane Kirkpatrick, describing the “San Francisco Democrats” in 1984. But it could be said about a lot of Americans, especially highly educated Americans, today.

In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong. The “we” can take different forms: the United States government, the vast mass of middle-class Americans, white people, affluent people, churchgoing people or the advanced English-speaking countries. Such people are seen as privileged and selfish, greedy and bigoted, rash and violent. If something bad happens, the default assumption is that it’s their fault. They always blame America — or the parts of America they don’t like — first

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Let’s think about that. That old trope has been flogged now for 23 years, since Reagan was still playing to the so-called “Reagan Democrats” (the remaining southern racists and those who refused to accept the fact that America had lost a war.) Kirkpatrick was one of those “Democrats.” (If I’m not mistaken I think even Richard Perle may have still been labeling himself a Dem at that time.) So she was seen as having some special credibility in further driving the wedge into the Democratic Party. She coined the phrase “San Francisco Democrats” which was a loaded term in so many different ways — in those days, it probably referred more to the DFH’s than gays, but it’s all the same, right? It was a very successful campaign and one that Democrats should look at closely as we see the pendulum finally swinging our way.

“Blame America First” is an excellent slogan. It takes the old right isolationism, marries it to the left and adds on the “blame” which in 1984 was still a very sore point for many Americans who had felt traumatized by all the social changes in the previous two decades and the ignominious end to the Vietnam war. You have to hand it to them. They are good

But it doesn’t really make sense in the current political situation, does it? There are an infinitesimal number of liberals who think that the US deserved 9/11. Indeed, until 9/11, the most vociferous objections to the ultra-conservative islamic regimes came from liberals (mostly feminists and gays, as it happens — hardly the base of the Republican party.) It makes no sense to throw godless liberals in with Islamic fundamentalists, as conservative writers like Dinesh D’Souza finally realized when he wrote his book in which he basically — you guessed it — blames America first, for its godless liberalism. And let’s not forget that the high priests of the religious right, Falwell and Dobson, blamed America first after 9/11, or as Barone puts it, “the parts of America they don’t like.”

The incoherence goes further than that, as when the authoritarian right argues intensely that “the constitution is not a suicide pact” as an excuse for undermining and usurping it. (Perhaps they should be known as “Trash the Constitution, Texas Republicans.”) Their cries of “treason” and “unamerican” and “blame America first” are no longer salient as the people see that they were lied to and spun and manipulated into Iraq and the Republicans have betrayed every principle they supposedly held dear to rape the treasury, reward their friends and fail at the most basic functions of government.

Most importantly, the Bush administration and the Republican congress have made the citizens of this country embarrassed and ashamed and that is a big no-no. Everything the Republicans have done since 1994, with their witchhunts and ugly partisan politics, is a denigration of that “Morning In America” feeling that Reagan was so successful at turning into politics. Bush went even further and took that ugliness global, presenting a face to the world that is both hideous and feckless in its self-serving machismo and its disregard of all commonly understood methods of communication, diplomacy and respect for the rule of law.

Americans do want to believe that they live in a great nation that strives to do the right thing, that stands for transcendent ideals, that operates as a real democracy and not some sort of hidden aristocracy. They like to think that our system works and they expect people at the highest reaches of government to respect the constitution and be accountable to the people. They know it isn’t always the case, but we’re talking about ideals here, and when someone flouts those ideals they had better be damned successful in everything they do and further the reputation of American goodness in the process, not sully it with failure and loathing.

Those “ideals” are subject to interpretation, of course, and form the basis of almost all of our political arguments over the years. But the fundamental belief that America is a nation that respects the rule of law, not men, is one that the vast majority of Americans truly like to believe in. When someone comes along, like Nixon and now Bush, who completely disregards their idealized view of what an American leader is supposed to uphold, it shakes the firmament and makes people feel insecure and cynical.

But Democrats had also better beware of that other side of America’s psyche — the need to be “winners.” If Dems don’t find a way to show the people that they have “won” where the Republicans “lost,” they will once again be vulnerable to being smeared as “Blame America Firsters” down the road even though they were tasked with cleaning up the wreckage left behind by Republican governance. (That’s where the “accountability” comes in.)

It’s a problem that cannot be solved by simple being hawkish on the Iraq occupation or talking tough about Iran or the GWOT. If hawkishness didn’t work for Republicans it certainly won’t work for Democrats. A little creativity and fresh thinking is required. The point to keep in mind is that the fundamental difference between the two parties is that Democrats believe America can be decent and strong at the same time and Republicans believe that those are mutually exclusive concepts. In fact, whenever anyone speaks out in defense of our American ideals and the constitution, Republicans immediately attack Americans first.

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Election? What Election?

by digby

Yesterday, Pat Leahy said this on “This Week”:

Leahy: I don’t know what this Mr Fielding’s talking about. I’ve never met him, I understand he’s a very nice man. And I’m not sure who he’s negotiating with on capitol hill. The power on putting on the agendas and putting on subpoenas is mine and that will be on Thursday of this week when they’ll be voted on. They’ll be one for Karl Rove and on for Harriet Miers and one for her deputy.

Guess what? Apparently somebody thinks he’s still the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee:

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the committee, said he had a long talk with Fielding on Friday and was reserving judgment. Specter said he would like to see Rove and Miers testify openly.

“I want to see exactly what the White House response is,” Specter said. “Maybe the White House will come back and say, ‘We’ll permit them to be interviewed and we’ll give them all the records.'”

I sure hope Arlen lets Pat know, because Pat seemed just a little bit peeved that the White House was pretending that their little hand-picked robots were still in charge of congress. Pretending the Democrats are invisible won’t make them go away.

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Bad Bushie

by digby

This is rich. From TPM:

…the White House has said that U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico was removed in part due to his handling of voter fraud complaints. That’s backed up by the numerous instances of powerful New Mexico Republicans (including Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM)) complaining to Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and President Bush about Iglesias’ decision not to prosecute certain cases of voter fraud. What does this mean? It means that Iglesias must have been lauded by the Justice Department for his handling of voter fraud cases. And not just lauded — but cited as an example for U.S. attorneys across the country. From The Washington Post:

One of the U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration after Republican complaints that he neglected to prosecute voter fraud had been heralded for his expertise in that area by the Justice Department, which twice selected him to train other federal prosecutors to pursue election crimes. David C. Iglesias, who was dismissed as U.S. attorney for New Mexico in December, was one of two chief federal prosecutors invited to teach at a “voting integrity symposium” in October 2005. The symposium was sponsored by Justice’s public integrity and civil rights sections and was attended by more than 100 prosecutors from around the country, according to an account by Iglesias that a department spokesman confirmed. Iglesias, a Republican, said in an interview that he and the U.S. attorney from Milwaukee, Steven M. Biskupic, were chosen as trainers because they were the only ones identified as having created task forces to examine allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 elections. An agenda lists them as the panelists for a session on such task forces at the two-day seminar, which featured a luncheon speech by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. According to Iglesias, the agency invited him back as a trainer last summer, just months before a Justice official telephoned to fire him. He said he could not attend the second time because of his obligations as an officer in the Navy Reserve.

I think TPM is too professional here to cut to the chase and speculate wildly. But I’m not.

The “voter fraud” issue is actually not one that the administration used as a primary excuse for the firings and for very good reason. It is the one for which Rove is most likely to have been directly interested. It has to do with his personal portfolio, after all — stealing elections. We only knew that failing to prosecute trumped up “voter fraud” is likely one of the reasons some of these people were fired because the Washington state US Attorney brought it up as a possiblity— and we know that Rove had a fetish about the issue.

This article reveals that Iglesias was a high profile “voter fraud” US Attorney who even ran a special task force to investigate the 2004 election. We know that he failed to find evidence of criminal wrongdoing — and we know that Karl wasn’t happy. Here’s what he said about New Mexico last April at that Republican National Lawyers Association meeting:

I mean, Bernalillo County, New Mexico will have a problem after the next election, just like it has had after the last two elections.

I mean, I remember election night, 2000, when they said, oops, we just made a little mistake; we failed to count 55,000 ballots in Bernalillo; we’ll be back to you tomorrow.

We did not previously know that Iglesias was a specialist in the field, which makes the interference even more damning for the administration. It’s quite clear that Rove refused to take no for an answer, even when the person who was refusing to indict was someone of impeccable credentials. That and his alleged failure to indict a Democrat before the election put him in the category of “bad Bushie.” He had to go.

Remember what Rove also said before those lawyers last spring:

Well, I learned all I needed to know about election integrity from the college Republicans.

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Unctuous GOP Box Turtle Of The Day

by digby

There was a lot of dancing on the head of a pin today on the Sunday Bobble Head shows, but one Republican Piece ‘O Work stood out to me for sheer chutzpah: the Box Turtle himself, dripping with phony sanctimony and desperately trying to lay the groundwork for a claim of white house victimization at the hands of evil Chuck Shumer:

Cornyn: I don’t believe there was any evidence that indicates that any of these individuals were relieved of their responsibilities for political reasons…

Cornyn: The kinds of questions that Senator Leahy wants answered are legitimate questions. I want the answers to those questions too. But I think we have to be careful here. When the leader of the effort on the judiciary committee is the leader of the Democratic Senatorial campaign Committee, Chuck Shumer, I think it undermines the legitimacy of a legitimate inquiry. And I would just encourage all of the…

Here we have Karl Rove potentially orchestrating of the firing of US Attorneys who are failing to politicize their offices to his satisfaction and yet the big problem here is the appearance of impropriety because Chuck Shumer is speaking out on the issue?

You have to give them credit for chutzpah if nothing else.

Steph: Does that you believe the white house should have white house officials testify and should send up their documents?

Cornyn: Well I think that’s a call for a separate branch of government and you know that always evokes some concerns for the separation of powers. But I do support the demand that we have department of justice officials come forward and testify fully and completely. Let’s get the facts out. I think what’s caused this to become a firestorm is because facts have come drip drip drip. There’s been as Senator Leahy said, information given that proved not to be correct and then had come back and be corrected…

Steph: But if I understand Senator Leahy correctly, if the white house claims executive privilege, you’re still going to subpoena …

Leahy: I don’t know what this Mr Fielding’s talking about. I’ve never met him, I understand he’s a very nice man. And I’m not sure who he’s negotiating with on capitol hill. The power on putting on the agendas and putting on subpoenas is mine and that will be on Thursday of this week when they’ll be voted on. They’ll be one for Karl Rove and on for Harriet Miers and one for her deputy.

Steph: Will you vote for it?

Cornyn: George you know, it’s amazing to me. This is what I’m talking about when I say a legitimate investigation can be overreached, can overreach and the idea, I mean Democrats think Karl Rove is working behind every bush in Washington..

Steph: But there is evidence in this email that came out this week that said he was discussing it..

Leahy: There is the email, the fact is that this idea that this executive… in the last number of years 74 people from the white house have come up and testified. During the Clinton administration the Republicans had no problem having 47 come up. I think you may recall those days..

Steph: I was up there …

Leahy: And uh, as well as John Podesta and Bruce Lindsey the president’s counsel. I wouldn’t have done this if I’d gotten a straight story the first time. It changes every single time they give it. What I want …

Cornyn: George I’ll join Senator Leahy in getting to the facts and following the fact where they may lead. But when we cross this line into basically a political witchhunt, led by the chairman of the Democratic senatorial campaign committee,..

A witchhunt! This is nothing short of persecution by the evil political mastermind of the Democratic senatorial Campaign Committee, no less! Where will it all end?

Steph: But I’m confused…he’s the chairman, though (pointing at Leahy)

Cornyn: Senator Shumer has a conflict of interest. They’re raising money on the Democratic senatorial campaign web site over this issue. I think that undermines the legitimacy of what I agree is a valid inquiry into the facts.

Leahy: You know George, I’ve been on the Republican Senate campaign committee web site a lot of times and they’ve raised a lot of money on me — and you know it kept me down to 74% of the vote my last election. But the fact of the matter is, Chuch Shumer has asked very legitimate questions, but ultimately I’m the chairman of the committee, I intend to have these subpoenas and Chuck Shumer…

Steph: Will you join the effort to subpoena Karl Rove and other officials or not?

Cornyn: I think you know, we have issued subpoenas, and I agree with that, for the department of justice and let’s get the information from them. You know they want to cut to the chase and get Karl Rove there and have a political circus and I don’t think that helps.

If they didn’t want a political circus, maybe they shouldn’t have foisted Bozo the Clown on us as president.

Box Turtle’s line is extremely lame as was Karl Rove’s plaintive cry earlier this week that the Democrats are “playing politics.” The problem is that Rove has spent decades perfecting his image as a dark political sorcerer with supernatural powers. They can’t turn around now and claim that the Democrats are politicizing poor Karl Rove. It won’t work — it’s dissonant, bizarre, laughable. Karl Rove is, by definition, political no matter what he does. You can’t make him a victim.

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