I wish all those pesky lefties would leave Karl Rove alone. He did not leak Valerie Plame’s name to the press, okay? Yeah, he named her husband. And he named the company she works for. And he named the project she was working on. But he never said her name, okay? Jesus, just let it go already.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
— from the Declaration of Independence

Hoo boy. US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is retiring. BushCo and their wingnut cheering section must surely have a mess on their hands from their desks being flipped end over end across the room when they popped massive boners on hearing the news. Now they can finally — finally! — stop all that damned judicial activism — by installing an activist judge of their own particular flavor. The Beltway must surely be awash with right-wing love juice today.

Next up for W: Try like hell to find a nominee even less suited for the bench than the last one his daddy dug up, Justice Clarence Thomas. I bet he’ll do it, too. I bet he’ll find someone that makes Thomas look like a legal Einstein.

Wingnutters are quick to accuse us lefties of being woefully out of touch with what the “majority” of Americans think and/or feel.

With that in mind, consider this from Salon:

According to an Annenberg poll conducted this spring, about 40 percent of Americans consider Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly a “journalist” — while only 30 percent of the people surveyed said they considered famed Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward to be one. … Meanwhile, more than a quarter surveyed said that another champion of judicious reportage, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, was a journalist.

People are stupid. I can live with being out of touch with these waterheads.

Uncle Sam needs YOU, young Republicans!

Don, Tim, other right-wing Lunchroom readers, surely you’ve talked to your kids about enlisting to support the “war” effort, haven’t you? This “war” is “both just and necessary,” after all.

Former Republican senator from Missouri John C. Danforth, on today’s New York Times Op/Ed page, put the smack-down on conservative Christian extremists and their push to legislate our world their way:

Moderate Christians are less certain about when and how our beliefs can be translated into statutory form, not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a healthy acknowledgement of the limitations of human beings. Like conservative Christians, we attend church, read the Bible and say our prayers.

But for us, the only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. Repeatedly in the Gospels, we find that the Love Commandment takes precedence when it conflicts with laws. We struggle to follow that commandment as we face the realities of everyday living, and we do not agree that our responsibility to live as Christians can be codified by legislators.

When, on television, we see a person in a persistent vegetative state, one who will never recover, we believe that allowing the natural and merciful end to her ordeal is more loving than imposing government power to keep her hooked up to a feeding tube.

When we see an opportunity to save our neighbors’ lives through stem cell research, we believe that it is our duty to pursue that research, and to oppose legislation that would impede us from doing so.

We think that efforts to haul references of God into the public square, into schools and courthouses, are far more apt to divide Americans than to advance faith.

Following a Lord who reached out in compassion to all human beings, we oppose amending the Constitution in a way that would humiliate homosexuals.

For us, living the Love Commandment may be at odds with efforts to encapsulate Christianity in a political agenda. We strongly support the separation of church and state, both because that principle is essential to holding together a diverse country, and because the policies of the state always fall short of the demands of faith. Aware that even our most passionate ventures into politics are efforts to carry the treasure of religion in the earthen vessel of government, we proceed in a spirit of humility lacking in our conservative colleagues.

Holy crap, a Republican with a brain, a sense of perspective, and the morality and courage to use (and speak out on) both. I’ll take this as proof positive that all Republicans aren’t all bad.

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) spoke out against Guantanamo Bay on the Senate floor the other day, phrasing the outrage there in such stark terms that I don’t see how anyone can refute it. And yet BushCo’s loving zombies do, in fact they love it — check out the I Heart Gitmo line the boobs at Powerline are flogging.

So I’m opening up the comments to my right-wing brethren out there (I’m looking at you, Don, among others): What do you have to say about this? Can you — dare you? — defend it?

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here — I almost hesitate to put them in the record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:

“On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold….On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.”

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

Looks like Congress is growing a pair, finally: House Votes to Limit Patriot Act Rules – Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON – In a slap at President Bush, lawmakers voted Wednesday to block the Justice Department and the FBI from using the Patriot Act to peek at library records and bookstore sales slips.

The House voted 238-187 despite a veto threat from Bush to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that allows the government to investigate the reading habits of terror suspects.

They’re still getting ready to extend the rest of the Patriot Act and further BushCo’s dream of eviscerating every single one of our civil liberties, but at least now the FBI won’t be snooping through your reading list to see how many times you’ve checked out Catcher In The Rye.

It’s too bad they’re not drawing the line until library books — a hotbed of terrorist activity, it’s true — but at least they’re drawing a line.

From Center for American Progress

Gooood question.

Here’s several examples of the idiocy of Fox “News,” the “Fair & Balanced” White House propaganda organ and right wing “news” source of choice:

First: Sean Hannity.

Second: interviewing Matt Drudge.

But the third is the doozy. Sez Hannity: “You have a huge, blockbuster story that is up there now … and you pick up AP, Reuters reporting … When will the mainstream media catch up to Matt Drudge?”

Drudge runs a story he picked up from AP and Reuters, but they have to catch up to him. This is “news,” Fox style.

I especially love the headline: “Fox Facts – Liberals plot to take back America.” Ooooohhhhh, aaaaahhhhh!!! Look out, the scary liberals are coming!

You’re damn right we are. It’s a real fact.

Video at onegoodmove.