Rove and Gonzales, who we know for a demonstrable fact don't give two shits about the lives of other people's children, are ecstatic to have something this big hit the news cycle the day before a nervous and guilty-as-hell Gonzo has to go before Congress.

Okay, so Tomlinson had to quit. But as with the DOJ, the EPA and any number of other entities in the alphabet soup of government, the question is how many ideologues the administration was able to sneak into the CPB under the radar, functionaries who are left making decisions that favor the neocon agenda and driving into disgusted retirement the people who made the instutition what it was -- and what it was meant to be -- from the beginning.

Shooter would ban himself from this site were it not for all the attention he receives. It's kind of depressing, the amount of "controversy" he's managed to stir up -- people cackling and crowing as they take potshots at the easy target he presents -- without really adding anything to the tone or content of the conversation here.

This "backlash" is completely and utterly a fiction created by the press to ramp up anxiety and create "news." I have two kids in college who've spent the last 24 hours on Facebook, and there is no backlash anywhere except in the press and perhaps in the terrified minds of a few Koreans who remember what was purported to have happened to a few stateside Arabs after 9/11. Other than that, pure MSM-driven hysteria.

...it bears saying again and again: what we've unleashed on Iraq is at least one or two massacres like this EVERY GOD-DAMN DAY of their lives. All the pain. All the horror. All the sense of "How could this have happened, how could my beautiful child/husband/wife have been taken away from us like this??" All of it. Courtesy of the good old U.S. of A. So what are we crying in our beer about?

In the rotted world of Beltway media cynicism, any talk of "root solutions" or "ideas" or "abstract concepts" is automatically insincere, irrelevant and merely a tactic for avoiding "real substance." Well, except when the issue was spreading democracy (the "idea") as a way to relieve the world of terrorism ("the root solution"), all based upon the Bush administration's understanding of the Middle East (a very "abstract concept"). That horseshit didn't seem to stick in the Beltway media's craw, did it?

P.s: Someone, please, give that Michael Harold guy a red star. He's RIGHT on the money.

Al Gonzales goes on the stand tomorrow and there will be cries from predictable sources declaring that anyone tacky enough to notice his nose growing longer and longer, "...when those poor children aren't yet cold in their graves..." is a heartless political manipulator.

Just as we seek to limit access to weapons of mass destruction on the international level, why not do the same locally? We say it's okay for Country X to have tanks, planes, big guns, armies, etc., but draw the line at nukes because of their destructive power. So what's wrong with forbidding the manufacture of guns like the Glock for sale to the public? This is a weapon that has the capability to kill far beyond any rational need for a normal citizen.

And please, don't say an armed citizenry is protection against a government gone wrong. If things ever got that bad here, a few Glocks wouldn't make the difference.

Why is it one never reads in the news about armed citizens foiling crime? Does it ever happen? Maybe, but it sure stays under the radar. Compare this to the number of people who are killed accidentally, or by family members or crazed strangers on a rampage. THAT, one reads about all the time.

So spare us the argument that citizens should arm themselves against crime.

This moron can't remember anything, and what little he does remember, he's too inarticulate to explain.

How does Gonzo get away with all these "I don't recall" answers.? He just spent two weeks + "prepping" for this testimony -- why did no Senator ask what prepping consisted of if not refreshing your memory about the events you knew were going to be the subject of our questioning?? Duh..??

Rosa Brooks' op-ed in the L.A. Times today says some useful things, IMO, about the way we "deal" with other people's tragedies in this country.

Krauthammer? Feh.

Dahlia Lithwick, over at Slate, lays it out pretty well. Of course it's incredible that Gonzo could really be that stupid, that inarticulate, that foggy of memory -- because he isn't. He's playing a role, taking a bean-ball for the Gipper.

What Bush heard in those updates was this: "Fredo hasn't cracked. He's rolled up in a ball like an armadillo being attacked by dogs. He's telling them he doesn't remember anything. They don't believe him but who cares? They're not finding out one damn thing." At which point our president sits back in his Airforce One seat and smiles a little smile to himself. All is well. That Fredo, what a stand-up guy.

Gonzales' testimony was a big "Fuck you" to the Senate and to the people who elected the Senate. Bush saying his confidence in Gonzo is increased when he didn't even hear the testimony is another big "Fuck you" to non-Bushies everywhere.

Is these forty songs changed the world. They're not saying those are the only songs that changed the world. It's their list. You can make yours, I can make mine.