"Despite all the negative attention devoted to the big spending Obama government, government spending fell by a pretty sharp 3.9 percent in the first quarter of 2009."

The first thing you have to realize is that "the big spending Obama government" that's spending us into Democratic big wasteful spending Hell is an invention of people who staple tea bags to their head in public, radio shock jocks, and the TV networks who fund and publicize them. And pretty much all Republican politicians, though these aren't mutually exclusive, i.e., many of those may belong to the latter two.

If you haven't figured out that they haven't a clue about what they're talking about, then you'll really have a hard time getting things right at all.

Most economists that I respect including two Nobel Prize winners ( Krugman and Stiglitz ) think that President Obama is not spending nearly enough by half to escape the gravity of deflation and potential further depression, and most also agree that he can do this and still bring the budget under control as he plans to later in a way that hasn't even been attempted when all of the "fiscal conservatives" were in charge.

We really need to stop letting people use that phrase without being challenged for evidence, every time they do, that it ever referred to anything except wishful thinking.

Dear network and cable news: Would you please stop letting Republicans use the phrase "fiscal conservative" on your shows without challenging them to prove that that anyone referred to as "conservative" in politics for the last 40 years was even remotely fiscally reponsible, let alone "fiscally conservative"?

Yeah, I didn't think so. Had to ask anyway.

Chomsky?

What in god's name are you talking about?

Chomsky dared to suggest that American foreign policy actions might have had something to do with terrorists' motivations to mount the criminal attack on 9/11 and the right wingers crucified him.. and you're equating this with the vapidity and forced folksiness of a radio host who recommends letting US government torturers off without prosecution?

Has Chomsky made some pronouncement I'm not aware of that makes your comment make any sense whatsoever?

Keillor threatened to sue a small time blog that was selling "Prairie Ho Companion" T shirts as a joke. It was a big story at the time. What was most amusing was that people were actually defending Keillor because they were tired of people "screwing others over with no prosecution", as if the blog making a few bucks with a satirical take off on the show's name was oh so cruel and a real threat to the Keillor's company, and a large successful program stomping down on a tiny blogger was just being nice. You know, Minnesota nice.

So no, I don't think his turning a blind eye to the law would extend to anything that was actually a transgression against his own interests.

The trick is to get people like this to realize that not being allowed to torture and get away with it IS in his interest. It's in all of our interests. Good luck with that though.

God I missed hearing that every time things went well for the Democrats.

William "the Wrong" Kristol's comments should be seen in light of the mighty engine of backwards predictive power that he is.

His reasoning re 2004 was ridiculous, and no it's not the same now. Different President, different situation in every way.

I mean, in the remotely-related sense that this might be some sort of wake up call that finally starts the GOP on the road toward moving back to the center someday, well, sure, that's "a good thing for the GOP". That's bending things pretty far into pretzel logic however to turn that into that this is an overall win for Reublicans, as it stands, right now.

Based on the denial from most Republicans, I think it will take several more election cycles before they even understand what happened, that moving farther to the right is the problem, not the solution.

Even David Brooks said this yesterday, claiming that it will take losing the Presidency three more times before the GOP gets why. I know Brooks isn't much of a measure of being right either but still, even a stopped clock can be right twice a day. Or in Brooks' case, a very slow-running clock who's right far less often than that.

Kristol, on the other hand, is like a clock with hands stuck at some impossible time, like thirty-seven past ten million o'clock. It's never that time. Never.

"i find myself agreeing finally with your opinion. "no to criminal prosecutions but yes to investigation."

How does this work then? An "investigation" that stipulates a kind of immunity for those it investigates, against any prosecution for whatever it may find?

And that's not setting a bad precedent?

As I commented earlier, at least the Peggy Noonan-style Republican position "just walk away from it" is logically coherent, even if utterly immoral. They know full well that once anything is investigated, we're bound by the constitution and laws and treaties to take it seriously, and anything short of that would be seen as worse than just leaving it buried and walking away.

The U.S. Constitution

I've seen a dozen or more comments about "The rule of law" and what it says in the Constitution. I hope everyone is as protective of the Constitution when Supreme Court Justices on the left try to IGNORE the Constitution and judge our laws based on INTERNATIONAL LAW or some other countries law. You can't have it both ways people.

The notion that abiding by things like the Geneva Conventions and our Constitution at the same time is impossible to do is your fantasy, not ours.

Tell the Americans who participated in War Crimes tribunals in the past that they were violating our constitution.

I bet they'd disagree.