The Week That Was And What a Week It Was
NEWARK, Delaware — Even though there still is a chill in the air hereabouts, I dug into the back of my clothes closet this morning while getting dressed for work and pulled out a T-shirt with this image on it. Wearing this particular shirt seemed appropriate given the week we’ve just been through. Besides which, my boss is out of town.
The week began, of course, with the horrific massacre of 32 students at Virginia Tech University at the hands of a lunatic poster boy for gun control. That was followed in short order by the death and dismemberment of over 200 people in the heart of Baghdad in a series of insurgent car bombings that further put the lie to the notion that the last-gasp surge strategy was working. And then the partial-birth abortion ruling by a Supreme Court majority that blathered about the sanctity of life at a time when the man in the Oval Office has been so utterly unconcerned about the lives of American soldiers, Iraqi civilians and hurricane survivors, among many others.
But then the impossible happpened. Something that was so comically Orwellian that I briefly forgot about the triad of tragedies.
That, of course, was the long-awaited appearance of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
There have been many watershed events in the six-plus years since that smirking frat boy from the Texas oil patch arrived in Washington, none of them good. But it is not being hyperbolic to say that we can look back on Thursday, April 19, 2007 as the day the wheels finally came completely off the Bush administration’s wagon.
Up on Capitol Hill, Gonzales parsed, obfuscated and outright lied his way through hours of grilling over the latest of the serial scandals in the Age of Bush — the rank politicization of the Department of Justice stage-managed by the shadow attorney general — White House consigliere Karl Rove.
The White House response to the testimony of a man who is far less competent than the U.S. attorneys that he fired was that:
President Bush was pleased with the Attorney General’s testimony today. After hours of testimony in which he answered all of the Senators’ questions and provided thousands of pages of documents, he again showed that nothing improper occurred. . . . The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President, and he appreciates the work he is doing at the Department of Justice to help keep our citizens safe from terrorists, our children safe from predators, our government safe from corruption, and our streets free from gang violence.
Have a good weekend, folks. Dog only knows what next week will bring.
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7 Responses to “The Week That Was And What a Week It Was”
It wasn’t a Che Guevara T-Shirt? Well, he was one of the rapists’ descendents…here’s a “rapist” [sic] joke for your weekend.
Custer [130 years before Iraq]: “Thanks for the offer, but we don’t need those Gatling guns, and I don’t need those extra two companies, either. We can handle this easily.”
Yes, Shaun – Gonzales did not disappoint, but lived up to his totally clueless reputation. I guess the choice was between vilified liar and admitted moron, and he chose the latter. But what of Justice? The lady should be glad today she’s wearing her blindfold, because the sight of our President offering undiluted praise and support after a performance like that would be heartbreaking for anyone who believes in the truth, or in equality under the laws of our land. This guy should operate a used car lot in Paraguay- not represent our most vital American asset. Of course like everything else, it has been politicized- but the issue really is not a liberal or conservative one, but one of integrity and faith in our justice system. If we lose that what makes us any better than a banana republic???
I thought that the wheels came off a short time after August 29, 2005.
Chris:
That’s when they got all muddy.
Shaun,
Fair enough!
So to quote Stephen Colbert- is he the greatest or just great?:)
How hypocritical. And I don’t mean the seeming disparity between the Supreme Court and Executive. I mean the writer’s characterization of the partial birth abortion ban and Iraq as inconsistent with each other – while at the same time poking at each one – which is an inconsistent position from one man, not two branches of government.
So, Mullen, you’re all for partial birth abortions but don’t want the war? I agree, babies are much easier to kill. Perhaps you’d like to look at the numbers of dead vs. the number of U.S. abortions?
At least you had the ability to admit abortion is killing just as war means killing. Or was that an intellectual oversight?
Why do I feel like I stumbled into DailyKos every time I read a ‘moderate’ post from Mullen?