I'm with you on Cheney's reaction, Joan. It was really quite striking. I expect everyone in the White House knows that this is cover-your-butt time, and devil-take-the-hindmost.

That White House has never been a very nice place to work...and right about now it must be hell-on-wheels.

I ask everyone: imagine Gonzalez on the Supreme Court. There was a very good chance of him ending up there. Not now, of course. But imagine it. He'd make Clarence Thomas look like Oliver Wendell Holmes...

I also suspect things have not hit rock-bottom for the boys and girls in the West Wing yet. More congressional oversight will likely turn up some very smelly stuff. It's just a matter of time.

I also happen to think Cheney is a genuinely evil human being..and I don't use that word lightly. He's a dangerous, vengeful geek, and I just hope his fangs get pulled before he does something really crazy..

pray tell, in what other first-world countries have mass school shootings occured with the frequency they have occured in our country? Seen a mass school shooting in England lately? France? Germany? Scandinavia? Holland? Belgium? No? Really? What a surprise. Could there be any connection to the fact that most of these countries regulate the sale and use of firearms in the most draconian ways? Could be.

The NRA wants to blame everyone and everything but the obvious culprit: "regulation" of guns so lax that any idiot who's breathing can get a gun.

America's gun culture is among the greatest of all her shames. I have no doubt whatever that if any or all of the founding fathers could see what a terrible mess we've made of the 2nd amendment, they'd denounce the NRA and everything it stands for.

Any trained member of professional law-enforcement or the military will tell you that you have to be *trained* to pull the trigger on someone with the intent to kill. Nine-out-of-ten civilians with a gun will never pull the trigger in time to "protect" themselves from a bad guy. And the tenth civilian may be mentally ill...like our most recent lunatic. This is settled fact. And the NRA knows it, all too well. They don't talk about this aspect of "guns protecting people" because they know this fact would undercut their entire reason for being.

Now, oddly, I do think it's also settled fact that the second amendment means exactly what it says. That individual Americans have the right to bear arms. I'm certain that this was in the larger context of organized community militias, for the purpose of defending against invasions..but the individual right is clearly stated in the amendment.

HOWEVER. That was 200-FUCKING-YEARS-AGO! When this country was mostly hostile wilderness. Lead any of the founding fathers through south-central Los Angeles on a hot July weekend, they'd look around, look at us, and say "what the FUCK is wrong with you people? We NEVER intended that amendment to handle the situation you face today. Why in the name of God didn't you change it long ago?" ...

And just what would we tell them? We'd say "well, ya see, we have this very rich organization called the NRA, mostly a front for right-wing gun-nuts and the arms-manufacturers, and they've bought-and-paid for most of our politicians, so, you see, we haven't changed that danged amendment, because we can't..because the NRA has paid a lot of money to keep it just the way it is."

If there is a Hell--and I wish like hell there was...a Dante-style Inferno, thanks very much--the leaders of the NRA would end up in the river of boiling blood, up to their fucking eyeballs. That is where the murderers spend eternity.

Would that it were so.

Glenn wrote:

"few commentators command more respect and admiration than Charles Krauthammer."

What?

Among whom, exactly?

I've *always* thought he was a fascist whore. There, I said it. The man's work has been beneath contempt for a very long time, and anyone who *admires* that work is beneath contempt too.

Jesus. What the hell has happened to this country? Is there some kind of selective virus that destroys the frontal lobes of certain people? Leaving only the lizard-brain behind?

Krauthammer admired? He's a total douchebag and always has been. What a ridiculous joke.

As for the actions you cite, that's just another day in the office for this bozo. Like I said: Beneath. Contempt. Period.

maybe McCain thinks that unintentionally implying that anyone who would join the army is ot-nay oot-tay ight-bray is somehow worse than intentionally suggesting we kill a million civilians in Iran with nuclear bombs.

I can see that. Yup. John, you go get 'em.