November 2008 is still over a year away. The primaries are months away. Both the Republican and Democratic fields are flooded with candidates. And the candidates are only just starting to talk about their specific proposals.

I consider myself a pretty informed candidate and I'm undecided--not undecided about party, though.

Now, the people that are still undecided the month before the November elections...those people scare me.

You're making me feel bad for Jenna Bush!

As some other posters have noted, Ms. Bush is completely within her rights not to volunteer for the army. Just because her daddy started a war doesn't mean she should finish it. To quote Jenna Bush (what?) from the Sawyer interview, "I'm not part of the administration. You know, I'm just my father's daughter."

However, Jenna Bush is capitalizing on her family name in promoting her book--how many first-time authors get profiled in Glamour and interviewed by Diane Sawyer? So Ms. Bush has opened the door to certain criticism. The "why aren't you in Iraq?" question is unfair. But I think issues where her beliefs differ from administration policy are fair game.

I just read the full transcript and it is vile:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_092607/content/01125113.guest.html

But you know, there's a part of me that almost feels sorry for Rush Limbaugh. He's a got a simple formula in that think, sweaty head of his: Limbaugh Listeners=Republicans=Perfect=The Troops. Then he gets a call on his radio show from Mike, a soldier and Republican who thinks maybe, just maybe, the military has done all that was asked of them and we should cut our losses.

RUSH: Mike, you can't possibly be a Republican.

CALLER: I am.

RUSH: You can't be Republican.

CALLER: Oh, I am definitely Republican.

RUSH: You sound just like a Democrat.

...

RUSH: You're not listening to what I say. You can't possibly be a Republican. I'm answering every question; it's not what you want to hear, and so it's not even penetrating your little wall of armor you've got built up....But the limitations that you want to impose here are senseless, and they, frankly, portray no evidence that you are a Republican.

Poor thing! Rush's whole world is being shaken! The military is coming after Limbaugh.

Well, not yet, but Limbaugh should be worried. She's impugning the character and patriotism of men who likely have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, brain trauma and have been trained to kill.

Be afraid Rush. Be very afraid.

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*FYI: I think the "phony soldiers" Limbaugh is refering to are those like Jesse Macbeth (this was a 2006 story), who claimed to be a former Army Ranger who committed and witnessed atrocities in Iraq. He was doubted even by many anti-war activists and found to be lying. But rest assured, they are numerous real and truthful soldiers against the Iraq War. And Limbaugh's broad-brush labeling of dissenters as phonies is unacceptable.

Mark Stevens writes "I feel that there should be no special prosecution of crimes according to their motives."

Really? Because that sort of flies in the face of our entire justice system. You run a guy over with your car and kill him. The law differentiates between whether you did this on purpose, by unavoidable accident, by sheer negligence, to save your own life (eg., he was firing a gun at you), etc. That's motive.

Perhaps what you mean is that you buy into the Bush Adminstration's line that

H.R.1592 prohibits willfully causing or attempting to cause bodily injury to any person based upon the victim’s race, color, religion, or national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. The Administration notes that the bill would leave other classes (such as the elderly, members of the military, police officers, and victims of prior crimes) without similar special status. The Administration believes that all violent crimes are unacceptable, regardless of the victims, and should be punished firmly.

Look, I don't have the stats to be able to show that perpetrators of certain hate crimes aren't doing enough jail time because prosecutors don't have the appropriate tools/laws available to them [anyone, anyone?]. But if that is the case, I see no problem with assigning "special status." Motive matters.

Of course, none of this really matters because Bush will veto it anyway.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/legislative/sap/110-1/hr1592sap-h.pdf

Courtesy of Tom Joyner:

And let me take a moment right here and now to say hello to those of you viewing from home. Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Senator John McCain. Governor Mitt Romney. And Senator Fred Thompson. Well, you know, I had to call them out.

I guess the frontrunners had better uses for their time. Last night was NBC "Must See TV" Thursday...