I found myself agreeing earlier with another post warning us not to get carried away with the cheap shots. Trying to be reasonable, the author brought up the valid point that Dick Cheney is human and has as much right to make mistakes as any of us.

Upon reflection, though, maybe he doesn't. It is true that our leaders, especially the President, bear a burden that most of us could never understand, including having to make terrible choices every day. In return for bearing this burden, we grant our leaders power and trust them to exercise it.

In a democracy, though, that trust is conditional. We grant it only to those who have the moral character to be accountable, responsible, and conscientious (even if we don't always agree with their acts of conscience). Dick Cheney is none of these things, and this story illustrates that beautifully.

It is true that the mainstream media is too quick to hunt easy prey, but I hope this story develops into something more substantial: a story about demanding accountability from one of the most powerful men in the nation. If Dick Cheney chooses not to acknowledge his mistakes, if he dodges accountability at every turn, than it is absolutely our responsibility to make him accountable, every day and for every mistake he makes, until he remembers what humility is.

"so what we have to do is translate them so we can tell the intelligence agencies what their content is so we can figure out how sensitive it is."

So, in other words, the prosecution has to ask an agent of the administration to translate what an agent of the administration meant, after which an agency controlled by the administration will decide whether or not it's admissable? That's bound to be a clear path to the truth.

I'm trying hard not to jump to conclusions, but yesterday's reports didn't add up. They were using the phrase "peppered" and one hospital administrator specifically mentioned "flesh wounds", but another report said that they had to leave some of the birdshot in Whittington's body. At the same time, he was in ICU even after having been tended to by Cheney's medical staff (or secret service). I'm no doctor, but you don't go to the ICU for minor wounds. You also don't generally stay in the hospital for two days.

When you stop to think about it, look at what this says about how much we hate Dick Cheney and how this administration behaves. We're all waiting for some poor old man to die so that Cheney will finally be holding a smoking gun (no pun intended). Now, I'm not saying we wish Whittington dead, but none of us would shed a tear (including myself, admittedly), if he died and Cheney paid the price. That's a pretty sad statement for just how downhill things have gone.

While I'd love to see Cheney go, I don't quite see the logic. From a strategic standpoint, what's wrong with a hate magnet? Cheney clearly represents the "old guard" and is constantly criticized by the left, but isn't it advantageous from the Rovian perspective to have that criticism focused on one target? While the reality is that Bush's entire administration is old guard and is virtually filled with hand-me-downs from the Nixon administration, the general public sees all of that incarnate in Dick Cheney. They hate him, but he's a sort of necessary evil, bequeathed to Bush by his father. Meanwhile, the president himself, by comparison, looks like a "compassionate conservative", a new-and-improved Republican who smiles, hangs out on the ranch, and watches football.

Why is that the neo-cons want us to take an originalist approach to the Constitution, but truth is somehow as malleable as they want it to be?

It's ironic to me that our so-called "evangelical Christian" leadership always seems to hide behind the letter of the law and completely abandons it's spirit. I seem to recall this guy who chastised the lawmakers of his day for becoming so obsessed with the law and lording it over others that they had completely forsaken their morality. I think his name started with a "J" or something.

Apparently, questioning whether the UAE should run our ports is "racism" against arabs, but racial profiling at airports, racial profiling in wiretapping, tossing innocent arabs into prison at Guantanamo, and blowing up arab civilians on the off chance that they live next to terrorists is all perfectly ok.

Call me crazy, but a little skepticism about turning over the control of a very sensitive domestic asset to a foreign company in an unstable region seems like a reasonable precaution. I don't know the background here, but $100 says this particular company has ties to the Bush family or one of his major supporters.

Just wanted to beat the right-wing commentators to the punch. Hopefully, someone on the left has the conviction in an election year to use this as one more example why the President's program has nothing to do with protecting us and has everything to do with grabbing up as much power as possible.

While, on the one hand, I think the Congress's reaction may be a bit knee-jerk, and it seems like the UAE-based company will have a small part in port management (and no role in security), does anyone in the administration get how extreme this reaction from the President seems? If we take them at their word, Bush just found out about this a few days ago, and yet he's willing to fight tooth and nail, held a special press conference on Air Force One to defend the move, and will veto an attempt to delay it? That just doesn't add up, and it's so transparent that it doesn't add up that even the radical right is jumping ship.