It's time for Harry to have a little chat with Mitch. He can stipulate the point that yes, with 49 votes, the Republicans can stop anything they don't liek from getting done. It's all according to Hoyle and nobody's going to change the Senate rules. He then needs to point out that with 49 votes, they don't get to initiate anything either and if he doesn't want to see even the chance of Junior getting any funds for his War Dept.'s budget approved, or any of his wingnut appointments confirmed, he'll start acing responsibly.

BTW - let Joe Lieberman know that if he doesn't get his act together, his seniority goes to 0. So what if he crosses the aisle? The game that McConnell can play with 49 members will work just as well for Reid.

Of course this assumes that the Democratic leadership is willing to risk letting somebody, somewhere say bad words about them. Not something I'd bet the farm on.

As scary as it sounds to me, I agree with Lieberman on this one, but need to add a small detail. The place to put this war tax is at the gas pump. I think $2.50 - $3.00 a gallon sounds about right.

The "War Tax" needs to be labelled as such right at the pump. Let the suburban commuter know just how much it really costs to fill up that Ford Excursion that he drives by himself to work. Let the soccer mom know just how much people are paying so she can chauffeuse little precious around. This should go over well with the wingnut crowd, I mean it's personal responsibility and using market forces to influence the actions of a bloated federal government, isn't it?

If we didn't think that cheap gas was the divine right of Americans, perhaps we wouldn't use so much of the damn stuff in such a stupid fashion and wouldn't give a rat's ass what foolishness the locals around the Persian Gulf got up to.

Before anybody thinks to throw the "elitist" tag at me, I'm not particularly rolling in cash and have drive a fair amount as part of my job, so such a tax would sting for me as well.

it's like déjà-vu all over again.

• We have the shadowy half-truths from anonymous sources, the PowerPoint presentation that is less than illuminating. Colin Powell's slide show was a paragon of clarity by comparison.
• The malAdministration's mouthpiece is denying that Junior has any plans to invade Iran, which means exactly zip.
• We've moved extra carrier groups into the Persian Gulf. There's nothing better to launch "punitive" air strikes from than the carriers that were used to help provide the provocation, although the bases in Iraq and Afghanistan can be used for follow-up strikes.

All we need is Condi Rice talking about smoking guns and the picture will be complete. Any day now, Tony Snow will announce that Bush doesn't need any further authorization from Congress. The reasoning will be something that has the logical quality of "Iraq" and "Iran" are only one letter apart, so they're really the same place, or somesuch nonsense.

OK, there are most likely Irarnian arms being used to take the odd potshot at US troops, but as far more fire is coming from diverted US munitions, shouldn't we be invading Connecticut to punish Colt? It takes far more than the mere presence of a country's weapons to establish intent. And given Junior's track record, I'd need to have Ahmadinejad come to my house and personally tell me that yep, he sent those EFPs to Iraq specifically to take out HUMVEEs before I'd even think that inavding Iran was warranted.

I don't suppose that it has entered Reynolds' tortured little mind for an instant, but by allowing Junior to issue assassination orders, he is of course advocating that other nations follow suit and step on American toes hard enough to make us reconsider whatever actions that our goverment is taking that might be pissing them off. You know, running airplanes into some buildings might be just the sort of thing that falls into this toe-stepping category.

One murder, two, three, or three thousand, I guess it's all the same once you take up that mode.

I heard House Minority Leader Boehner on NPR this morning saying that we needed to show Al Qaeda that we had the "stomach" for the fight. I seem to remember the Pentagon papers as quoting Henry Kissenger counseling Richard Nixon that we needed to stay in Viet Nam to show the Soviets and the PRC that the US was willing to accept losses to fight Communism even though there was no hope of winning. I'd take Boehner a lot more seriously if he had the "stomach" to send his kids or grandkids. I guess, like so many of the GOP leadership, that he hasn't got the conscience to stand by his beliefs, but has managed to find the "stomach" to send somebody else's kids.

BTW - joe, Congressman Sestak, a retired Admiral, has a bill in the works to cut of funding for the ground war by December 31st, so let's take first things first.

David Drier claims:

"We dishonor the lives of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice if we in fact abandon the mission."

He doesn't tell us how tall the pile of bodies needs to be in order to build a suitable memorial to a war that we were lied into.

When you decide to tell the truth, you only need to remember one story. The administration should try it.