I would very much like to claim shock and and incredulity over the New York Times article exposing the links between network military "analysts," the government, and the military-industrial complex.  Really, I would.  I would like to think my government above such things as trading lucrative access for favorable press, and cutting those who offer even the mildest of criticism out of the loop.  I would like to think our corporate news media at least aspired to pretend to hold to the tradition of Murrow and Woodward and those others who risked everything to tell us the truth, instead of those who risk nothing to pander to an increasingly stultified audience.

I would like to believe our news isn't pre-packaged, Americanized for American tastes, freeze-dried crap vomited up on cue by an army of willing slaves, eagerly lining up to thank this administration on behalf of the deluded population and requesting if we might, pretty please, have another.

I'd like that very much.  But then, I'd also like world peace.  So now, as Mom suggested, I shall spit in one hand and wish in the other, and see which one fills up first.

Shorter House Ethics Committee on leadership's handling of Mark Foley: You guys didn't do your jobs.  You didn't do your jobs on purpose.  But not doing your jobs has become so much a part of doing your job that we can't really punish you just because you threw a few 16 year-olds to the wolf.

Check left, check right.  All clear.  Deep breath.

Now, let that be a lesson to you and don't let it happen again or we might have to reprimand you.  Or something.  So there.

Hairflip.  Exit, stage right.

The House voted yesterday to fund the preservation of 10 internment camp used to house Japanese-Americans during WWII.   The National Park Service seems to be grumbling about the expense of it all, but I believe that in the last 6 years we've spent $38MM on plenty of things worse than preserving the history of our civil rights.

Except that we have already allowed it to happen again.

Oh, we haven't pulled up stakes on entire ethnicities and forced them into middle-of-nowhere barracks.  Yet.  But we have abdicated our right to even a pretense of privacy, we have abandoned habeas corpus, and a portion of our citizens would, given the opportunity, gladly alienate anyone not professing at least a surface-deep and temporarily-abiding belief in Christian theology - particularly those nasty Muslims threatening to take oaths on their own stupid book instead of the holiest of holies Bible (though I've yet to determine which translation) (USA Today comment section).

We have Jose Padilla, an American citizen, who was held without charge for three years.  Held in a modern day internment camp, which surpassed the shocking abomination of those 50 years ago by including physical and psychological torture as part of the daily fare, Mr. Padilla was systematically morphed into more than a citizen with the wrong sort of pedigree, or perhaps a more accurate characterization would be "less than," he was turned into little more than "a piece of furniture."

Congress may well recognize the 50 year old gross error of treating a swath of citizens as through the slant of their eyes or the cadence of their accents somehow unfailingly points to a treasonous tendency, but they are blinded to a worse atrocity perpetuated today - that citizens are not only being held in modern camps without charge, but are there being systematically dehumanized in the name of the very rights upon which such actions gleefully trample.

This is not to say that the US government should ignore threats where it finds them.  In finding them, however, the government should be obliged to provide some proof, and formally charge the individual(s), and try them in open courts of law.  With few exceptions, this has been our history for the last 250 years.  More than just a symbol of our national values, it is confirmation of them and testimony to the lives lost in securing them.

Yesterday, the Congress voted to preserve the internment camps used against Japanese-Americans in WWII as a reminder of our national hubris, that we might never allow such a thing again.  Too late, I think, for some.

3 weeks after pleading guilty to making false statements and conspiracy to commit fraud.

Only a Republican of the 109th Congress, or a member of the Ulysses S. Grant administration, could have remained in office for so long after pleading guilty to such crimes.

I'd really like to know who tailors his pants.

Bob Ney (R-OH) pled (many people say "pleaded," which just annoys me no end.  The past-tense of plead is pled.  Pleaded might have begged or borrowed its way into the AHD, but pled originated with the word in the 1200's, and I firmly support its solid etymological history.  I am a word junkie.  Sue me.)

Yes, I have a point, thanks.

Bob Ney pled guilty to charges of criminal conspiracy and making false statements.  He also indicated he had no intention of resigning from Congress at this time.  Maybe later.

To give credit where it is due, he definitely out-balls Tom Delay (former R-TX, indicted on campaign fraud), who admittedly tried to jury-rig House rules so he wouldn't have to step down, but never went so far as to tell the entire American electorate to kiss his lily white ass. 

Ney. grafter to the star that is Abramoff, is shockingly seeking treatment for alcohol dependency.  I'm betting Mel Gibson is pissed right the hell off.  Every Tom, Dick and Harry is checking himself into Betty Ford these days, makes the job of a semi-contrite declining celeb claiming mere abject stupidity on the drink even more difficult.  Mel should sic Tom Cruise on the jerks.  Tom could set 'em straight in short order.

Anyway the Republicans are shocked, shocked I tell you, that Ney didn't resign immediately upon pleading guilty, and will continue to collect his paycheck.

Excuse me.

Hello.

Ney knew he was guilty all along.  And I guaran-damn-tee you the leadership knew it, too. The issue is not that he didn't resign today, after pleading guilty to a crime that could conceivably land him in prison for 10 years (not likely, but possible), although that's bad enough.  Uh, no.  The issue, friends, is that the man took bribes, and prostituted himself and his constituents, and lied to investigators (and Clinton lied to investigators; if Clinton did it, it's supposed to be anathema, right?).

Hastert is calling for someone else's resignation, for a change, and Tony Snow insists consistent Republican corruption has nothing whatsoever to do with the Republican Party.  He's a rather handsome man, that Tony.  Had we no brain, we might actually accept his story.  Unfortunately, our synapses function and we are forced to respond with "what an unfortunate waste of facial symmetry."

Ethically, Bob Ney should have resigned months ago.  Strategically, his staying can only help the opposition.  I'd ask who he's working for, but I don't think anyone's paying him for this stunt.

I think he just might be that stupid.