By won, you mean like on a game show?

P.S. They're not given -- not by you, not by me, not by any government, not by any religion. They are not yours, mine or anyone else's to give. They're inalienable.

Are you a monarchist? Or just a normal everyday fascist?

instead of being forced to wear rags on our heads (and burquas for our womenfolk and yellow stars for our Jewish brethren)

Rags on our heads? (What kind of rags? wash rags? cottons? knits? disposable paper towels? rags from the rag-and-bone man? what?)

burquas for our womenfolk? (womenfolk? Isn't that a feminist term, as in "Hide your womenfolk?" As in "Them's what are the adult females of the species?" I don't think John Wayne would approve.)

yellow stars for our Jewish brethren? (I take it you're not Jewish. So, the same people that make you wear rags on your head and make your womenfolk wear burquas are also going to make all Jews wear Holocaust badges?)

(Although it's not like the Jews haven't always caught hell for no reason I can understand. Badges didn't start with the Nazis.)

http://history1900s.about.com/od/holocaust/a/yellowstar.htm

Could you be just a little more racist?

And here I was about to offer the suggestion that perhaps some of those persons involved in the leak to save Alberto Gonzales were acting more out of a sense of misplaced civic duty, (like the civil servants you might find in Terry Gilliam's movie "Brazil"). Your comment serves to remind me that a significant portion of the conservative electorate is bigoted, racist and just plain-old filled with hate for anyone who different from themselves.

1. During the work week, information that is embarrassing to the administration emerges as a result of public inquiry.

2. A narrative is established as a result of the inquiry (e.g., Gonzales is lying about whatever potentially illegal activity he is being questioned about at the moment) that casts the administration in a negative light.

3. On Saturday an alternative narrative (it is a simple misunderstanding; nothing illegal occurred) is anonymously provided by the administration to the major MSM outlets (i.e, the NYT, CNN, Fox, etc.).

4. On Sunday the alternative narrative is parroted by the major MSM outlets.

5. On Sunday, the talking heads use the alternative narrative as provided by the MSM outlets to debunk the original narrative.

6. During the remainder of the week, the MSM uses the talking heads Sunday discussions to further debunk the original narrative.

7. The process repeats with each new week's (i.e, media cycle) embarrassments.

Right out of the Goebbels playbook.

It cannot be denied. You do have some occasional entertainment value. Your comments bring into the foreground the utter insanity of the administration's (and the Republican party in general) behavior.

In fact, the current congressional hearings into the administration's crimes and misdemeanors bears amazing resemblance to this classic Monty Python sketch on a Dead Parrot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GipFyAsYK1M

Just picture your favorite administration official on the left (i.e., the shopkeeper) and your favorite Congressional committee member on the right (i.e., the customer) and it plays out perfectly.

The real world situation would be funnier if thousands of people weren't suffering and dying and our democracy wasn't being destroyed as a result.

Free country, First Amendment and all that, but you seemed to circumambulate quite a bit only to end up offering little or nothing in the way of evidence that your statement had any real basis in fact.

Republican talking points and claims of integrity and justice for all just don't sell like they used to. I read a short article at FDL that pretty much sums of the state of the Republican party:

In other words, Rove’s got NOTHING. He’s trying to sell his own party and he’s not doing it. He can’t deliver.

Worse, we know from the Abramoff scandal that there were at least 60 members of Congress implicated; what happens if we impeach Gonzo, actually press for more and deeper investigations into the Abramoff connections, and we find those 60 members??

There won’t be any Republican left who can run from the corruption of the Beltway, because they are the corruption.

There is no daylight between the Republican Party and the Culture of Corruption, and it’s about time that real conservatives snapped out of their somnambulistic torpor, wiped up the mess and started over.

http://www.firedoglake.com/category/uncategorized/

Has there every been a more corrupt group of people in the federal government than the current Republican party?

Not in my lifetime. And that includes Nixon.