Douchebag

Torture is AWESOME! Just ignore those crazy WW2 vets. They only had to contend with Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire. These guys have BOX KNIVES! They live in CAVES! They're way more hardcore.

Dick Cheney admits on camera to ordering the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody on multiple occasions - in violation of international law, national law, and the U.S. constitution. According to United States Federal law, each instance is a felony offense punishable by decades in prison.

Dick Cheney just stated on national TV - boldly, unapologetically, directly to our faces - that the Vice President is above the law.

Holy shit.

"But where says some is the king of America? I'll tell you friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of Britain. ... so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king."

- Thomas Paine

... so much for that. The rule of law in America is dead.

"blah blah I didn't do anything wrong, charging $ for government positions is no big deal!"

Looks like we might have found Ted Stevens a cellmate!

Hey, at least we finally got rid of Mr. $90k-in-the-freezer. Thank you for that one, Louisiana GOP!

Poor ol' Joe, once again, finds himself in trouble for bashing Democrats.... only to find Democrats victorious in the end.

This time, he says, if they take away his Chairmanship ... he'll bolt the party and join the Republicans!

OH GOD NO, SAY IT AIN'T SO JOE!

Does anyone really think Lieberman would rather bolt to the minority party, rather than accept Chairmanship of another committee or subcommittee? It isn't like the minority can offer him any kind of chairmanship at all. Plus, he would be sealing his electoral defeat in 2012 to the next Democratic nominee - and wouldn't exactly fit in with the socially conservative Republican caucus very well. They aren't exactly tolerant of, well, anyone else.

"Elections have consequences", I think, is what the GOP used to say in 2004 to any Democratic objections...

UPDATE

Senate Democrats vote for Lieberman to keep his committee chairmanship. This should've been obvious given their track record. I keep forgetting that Senate Democrats don't have spines.

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Updated: now with extra stupids (via playlist)

Ben Bernanke:

"There are no atheists in foxholes and no ideologues in financial crises," Mr. Bernanke told colleagues last week, according to one meeting participant.

In a time of crisis, at least we can all come together and bash atheists!

Hey, I've got some more for you: there are no bailouts for families that lost their homes in your $1,000,000,000,000.00 bailout for international corporations who engaged in predatory lending. There is precedence for moral hazard in the newly planned economy. There is no free in your market, nor principles in your philosophy of governance.

update: Obama rejects blank check plan for wall street

Pelosi: "The Congress of the United States has always been an institution that has been mockable."

Translation: Don't blame the Democrats in control of Congress for Congress sucking! Congress has always sucked!

Stewart: "You guys came in with a head of steam. You said no blank check for the war, we're gonna check this President's unchecked power. Do you feel like that has been accomplished?"

Pelosi: "Well in the House of Representatives, we have sent that bill over and over again to the Senate with it hitting a brick wall over there. But I do feel good about the things we have done other than that. But in terms of Congress' performance on the war, I'm with the public on that. I'm disappointed."

Stewart: "So on the war, you think Congress has dropped the ball."

Pelosi: "Not the House of Representatives. In the House we have sent a timeline, a goal, whatever we thought they could accept, pass, and send to the President."

Stewart: "Why can't the House of Representatives put a little bit of pressure on the Senate? In the hierarchy of balance of power, are you the little sibling?"

Pelosi: "No. The Speaker has awesome power, for our House. But it's a bicameral legislature, and in the Senate, a simple majority doesn't matter. 60 votes are not..."

Stewart: "But we had Harry Reid over here. Senator Harry Reid came on the program and sat across from me. Can I tell you something, it was crazy. Six minute interview, he was asleep for four of the minutes. He left, and I just kept asking questions to the chair."

Pelosi: "It's a tough job. It's a tough job."

Stewart: "I've never seen anything like it. Was he, is he... is he just sad, or what happened? Can't you put more pressure on him more publicly, are there ways...?"

Pelosi: "No, it's not him, it's the sixty, you need sixty votes. So he gets the Democratic votes, and that is a majority. But you still need nine more votes. That is why this election is so important. I mean, the, the idea, we, we have been able to accomplish a lot, we passed our energy bill, the minimum wage first time in ten years..."

Stewart: "Couldn't you take stronger uh, in terms of the war, why not just withhold funding? That could be done."

Pelosi: "Well we did that, we did that this last time, and we sent the bill over with no funding, and conditions for how we would stay there. The bill came back from the Senate with the funding, and no conditions on how we stay there. We need..."

Stewart: "So then you guys would say..."

Pelosi: "We need a new President. That is what we..."

Stewart: "...couldn't you say at that point..."

Pelosi: "No."

Stewart: "We do need a new president, I would say that. Let me ask you this..."

Pelosi: "Our election in 86, we thought the President would listen to the will of the American people. It was very clear they wanted an end to the war."

Stewart: "Wait, wait, which election? 2006?"

Pelosi: "2006. Now, that was step one. 2008 we get a Democratic President, we bring the war to an end, and return to a position of leadership in the world."

Stewart: "Is Congress as it is made up today, obsolete? Is, is, with a powerful President, is Congress a sort of a vestigial, unless it has 60 votes in the Senate, and a huge majority in the House of Representatives?"

Pelosi: "Fair question."

Stewart: "Seriously?"

Pelosi: "Because the fact is the Republicans in Congress vote so much as a rubber stamp with the President that they are abdicating the role of Article I, we are the first Article of the Constitution, the Congress of the United States. But if you say, I'm just going to vote with the President, stick with the President every time, then he has power that he should not have."

Stewart: "Will you exercise that type, lets say Barack Obama is fortunate enough to win the presidency."

Pelosi: "Lets say that! Lets say that!"

Stewart: "Or, or - I don't want to play favorites here - or Hillary Clinton. Lets say that either one of them is fortunate enough to do that. Are you saying that the Democrats will exercise more and more stringent oversight over a Democratic President than the Republican Congress did over President Bush?"

Pelosi: "The same thing, the point is that"

Stewart: "You know, rubber stamp"

Pelosi: "No rubber stamp. And in terms of the, in terms of the, for example, domestic surveillance. No President, Democrat or Republican, should have the power that this President [unintelligible]. So it isn't, and the Congress of the United States has to assert its prerogatives, and this Republican Congress has been a rubber stamp for so long, but that will change."

This has been really educational for me. I have learned a lot of new things about how our government works.

Before I watched this video, I was sort of angry at the Democrats for giving Bush a blank check for war, and immunizing everyone he told to break laws banning things like torture and warrantless domestic spying.

Now I understand that I shouldn't blame them, it isn't their fault. It is all the Republicans fault.

No president should have unchecked domestic surveillance powers. Congress has to assert itself, and prevent the President from assuming such sweeping authority and instigating a massive, domestic spying program. Congress hasn't done that because it is a rubber stamp for the President. See, in Congress, having a majority gives you a tremendous amount of power. <!-- One of the most important powers is the power to issue subpoenas and force executive branch officials to divulge information to Congress or go to jail. --> The Republicans in Congress have been using this awesome power to pass special, unprecedented laws for the President, his Administration, and his corporate cohorts like AT&T, Halliburton, and Blackwater; to retroactively immunize them for ever breaking laws banning war crimes, torture, and spying. They also have used their power to allow the executive to commit perjury unchallenged, and to ignore Congressional subpoenas without consequences. But that will change when we can finally elect a Democratic Congress.

Oh, wait; I forgot that there was a massive wave election in 2006 that swept Democrats into the majority in both the House and the Senate for the first time in 12 years. So those laws covering up the domestic spying scandal and funding the war must've been passed by the Republican Congress prior to January 2007.

Oh, wait: That is actually not accurate. As it turns out, it was actually a Democratic Congress that passed those laws, and that has been President Bush's rubber stamp for the last year and a half. But you shouldn't be mad at the Democrats, because even though they have a majority, a majority doesn't matter. In the Senate, there is a special rule that says only 50 votes are needed to pass a law when the Republicans are in the majority, but when the Democrats are in the majority, 60 votes are needed to pass all laws. Additionally, Republicans in the Senate still have the power to have the last say on what bills come to the floor for a vote and what they contain, as long as there aren't at least 60 Democrats. This explains how the 49 Republicans in the Senate took a bill that had no war funding and had a mandate to end the war, and turn it into a blank check for more war with no mandated timetable to end it. Also, when the Senate changes a bill, the House has no choice but to accept whatever the Senate decides to pass.

Oh, wait: actually, only the House of Representatives has the authority to initiate funding bills. So there is no way that 49 Republicans in the Senate could have initiated the bill to give Bush a blank check for war. The bill actually was first passed by the House of Representatives, where the Democrats have 236 members and the Republicans only have 199. But there is a special rule somewhere that says that the House of Representatives has to pass whatever bills the President wants them to, no matter who has a majority. So, the reason that they passed unconditional war funding bill and a bill retroactively immunizing people who broke our laws was because Bush is President and he made them do it.

This will all change when we elect a Democratic President.

Source

In case you missed it, Rush Limbaugh, the oxycotin-taking conservative talk radio host, was urging Republicans in Texas and Ohio to skip their party's primary on March 4 and instead cast a vote for Hillary Clinton in order to prolong the fight between her and Barack Obama. And that Tuesday, as media in both states reported, thousands of Republicans did just what Limbaugh and others had suggested -- they changed parties to vote for Clinton.

One problem. That's basically illegal. And now the board of elections is looking into a criminal investigation of the matter.

As the board of election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where Cleveland is located, launched an investigation into illegal crossover voting in the state's 2008 presidential primary, a big open question remains unanswered: Will county officials go after the ringleaders of apparently illegal electioneering where thousands of Republican voters swore -- under penalty of law -- allegiance to the Democratic Party in order to vote for Hillary Clinton?

This is despicable. This kind of dishonest fear-mongering and distortion of the actual issue should disqualify the entire party from holding office.