"For many reasons, this is by far the best book and greatest literary achievement by a political figure in my lifetime ...."

So what is he, ten weeks old?

This is the person John McCain chose to be Vice-President? A former beauty pageant contestant attacking her former son-in-law for appearing in a beefcake magazine?

How the hell do you satirize this? Somewhere, the ghosts of Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater are begging, "Make it stop, mommy, MAKE IT STOP!"

This is one of those moments when the Democratic Party has to draw a line and force the Republicans to go on the record against health care reform.

Let Lieberman and Snowe and all the faux-moderates go on television and explain why an **option** that isn't even binding on states whose populace doesn't want it is so horrible that they will filibuster.

And keep these clowns out there on the floor of the Senate, reading the Bible and the phone book and Shakespeare and whatever, and watch the general population's opinion of Congress and the Republicans crater.

Let the public know the names of these faithless servants of the public weal. Let it be seen. And then let's see what the Senate's makeup is after the 2010 election.

And it's time to lock Lieberman out of the Democratic cloak room. He's obviously made his choice. Time for him to live with it, if Connecticut voters will let him.

Never happen, though. It would take a measure of spine that is almost a novelty on the Democratic side these days.

t.

I think the left blogosphere owes Steele a big apology. When he was appointed, there was a lot of skepticism that, like Clarence Thomas, he had gotten the job because he was the only African-American available for the job who was acceptable to the Republican "base." The differences, though, are striking.

While Clarence Thomas has lived up (down?) to expectations one might attach to having been rated dead last in qualification among District Court Judges at the time of his appointment, Steele has actually done a good job of what the Conservatists expect. Recent wobbling on Acorn aside, he reacts to anything positive about the Left with criticism, anything negative about the Left with schadefreud, and blames anything negative about the Right on the Left. He is quintessential mouthpiece for the merchantile Right.

If he sometimes (SOMETIMES?) seems facile or silly, perhaps it's time to acknowledge that he was hired to do exactly what he is doing.

Given the number of quotations from the Sermon on the Mount, I might have thought the blog entry would address this from Matthew 5:32 -

" . . . whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery."

A survey of Christianist Congresspersons and their spouses' marital history would surely require some revision.

After the vote to disapprove of Joe Wilson calling the President a liar on the floor of Congress, Trent Franks said the following:

"Today's vote has been a waste of time, money, and effort, intended to distract for the substantive debate about health care, and those Members of Congress who have promoted this resolution should be ashamed of the partisan circus they have created."

"Partisan circus," eh? There aren't enough hours in the day to note all of the hypocrisy shown by Christianist Conservatives in this country.

That's all. Just, thank you.

It takes a conservatist wingnut would criticize a politician for adopting a policy of, "stop us, before we kill again."

Orly Taitz, I understand. Stupid and ignorant people (including "attorneys") are all too common.

But what about Taitz's counsel? If s/he allowed this, then obviously s/he has little or no experience with Federal judges.

Anyone with meaningful experience in the Federal courts has heard the old joke about Freud going to heaven. Freud arrives at the Pearly Gates and is met by St. Peter (I know - it's a *joke*, okay??) who says, "Oh Doctor Freud, we're so relieved to see you, we're very worried about The Almighty."

And Freud asks, "Really? Vaht seems to be de problem?"

And St. Peter answers, "He's having delusions of grandeur. He thinks He's a U.S. District Court Judge."

Pat Buchanon's column reads like a dumbed-down rehash of Niall Ferguson's "The War of the World - Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West."

And Pat, even Ferguson acknowledges that Hitler's ambition was to create a German world empire.

And for the record, Pat:

1) Hitler didn't let the British Expeditionary Force go at Dunkirk. Goering promised to annihliate them from the air, and Hitler was happy not to expose ground troops to British soldiers fighting with their backs to the sea;

2) Hitler pursued "peace" in 1940 because he wasn't ready for a real war. Any "peace" he might have reached with the English and French would have been worth at least as much as the "peace" he reached with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939 (remember, Pat?), a little less than two years before he launched Barbarossa;

3) The trains may not have rolled into camps until 1942, but the Nazi regime began their methodical murder of European Jews with the invasion of Poland in 1939. Buchanon's mischaracterization of the timeline smacks of the worst sort of Nazi apologia, that the Allies brought on the Holocaust by ending appeasement.

Shame.

The good Senator finds the White House's statement "incredulous"?

Look it up, Senator. I think you meant "incredible."

In the future, it might be a good idea to print the U.R.L. of a site holding malware rather than hotlinking to the site. People often click through on things like that before they read farther down the page.