...they sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war.

I am sure I am not the only one who will point this out, but I would like to point Mr Shit-for-brains to Article I of the Constitution:

The Congress shall have Power ...

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

Any asshole who could have a knowledge of that document and still claim that the framers were attempting to grant the executive with "...near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war..." is a complete fucking idiot.

Where do these people post resumes to get jobs for which they are completely unqualified? I want to be CEO of a company and get paid lots of money, if anyone is listening.

Jeff - my refutation of Goldfarb stands regardless of what intervening Supreme Court decisions and other more recent interpretations have indicated. Goldfarb's point was that the framers sought to endow the executive with these magic near dicatatorial powers, a point easily contradicted by the document that they in fact created.

If his point had been, for example, that there have been subsequent re-interpretations that grant that endowment to the executive, I would imagine (without a lot of grounding in the history of US Jusiprudence on War Powers or martial law) that he might have more legs to stand on.

But this was not his point. In inimical neo-con fashion, he assumes a completely authoritarian point of view, and then proceeds to point to quotes from hagiographic American sources that say exactly the opposite of what he is saying, but since he is patriotic and passionate, we are not supposed to bother to check.

Pay no attention the man on the other side of the curtain.

American discourse is about half a step above mob justice at this point. The entire electorate is being degraded to the status of lynch mob by rhetoric like this.

MS. PERINO : ...And in addition to that, I think one of the things that we're talking about here, when you're asking about double-delete and what were the motivations, that is separate and apart from what we're talking about here, which is no one -- no person that was actually doing official government work or talking to any other outside groups or to the media would have known that their files would have -- that some of the emails would have been inadvertently lost in a transition of conversion of a technical sort.

Q : Dana, can I follow up on that real quick. So this allegation about the 5 million missing emails refers only, as you understand it, to this 2002-2003 time period?

MS. PERINO : I don't know the time period. I'm saying 2002-2003 because that's when I worked at CEQ, and that's when I know that I got -- I moved from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook . . .

Microsoft ate my homework.

-- sysprog

not that nothing has ever been lost in transitions like this, but anyone who believes that this transition

• of White House communications systems, that
• are required to be archived by law

happened without a couple of backups being made and duly archived is a complete fucking moron.

I fully believe this administration capable of the kind of monumental incompetence that this would take. But I do not believe, barring the evidence of a thorough investigation, that it occurred.

to my previous comment -

anyone who believes that someone who deletes those type of data banks "accidentally" ("oops! two years worth of communications between the White House and the Republican National Committee and I forgot to press "Save." Gosh darnit. I'm just no good before my first cup of coffee!") is actually doing so "accidentally," absent a completely astounding body of evidence.

...is way too gullible to be assessing political figures and situations.

Sorry for interrupt.

damn preview button.

I don't have any issues. I think Levon did a great job playing and singing some songs that I wrote.

Robbie - I love your music, and everything I know about you, which admittedly isn't much, says that for the most part you are a pretty good human being.

But this kind of shit is ridiculous. Even if you are entirely "right" on all of the issues, you're still being a dick about it thirty years later.

As far as when the sea change started, I'll go back to this moment last April (not sure of the exact date):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qEex9zYNEus

It's almost enough to make you proud to be an American.

bebop-o: "I do believe it's okay to say love and sit and watch grass grow green at Greenwood's site for adjusting sore eye pupils."

Amen, brother. Amen.

Irving 143: Please get Hegel to run. Thx.

Oh, and Glenn. Thank you for scaring the shit out of me with that material about Ledeen. I had no idea.

I suppose there has never been any shortage of ideological nutcases scampering around the halls of power. But I wish that the ones we had now were less ... ideological nutcases, I guess.