Washington: The Fire This Time
Much of the nation’s attention was on the wildfires around Lake Tahoe on Monday, but there was an even bigger conflagration in Washington as Americans continue to reap the whirlwind of six-plus years of Bush administration extremism.
* A Supreme Court packed with Bush-appointed right-winger zealots and doctrinaire conservatives handed down four decisions.
One favored developers over endangered species. One gutted a key provision of campaign finance reform. One was a slap in the face of Americans concerned about their tax dollars going to faith-based charities. And in a real humdinger, one significantly limited Constitutionally-guaranteed free speech rights.
* Up on Capitol Hill, former EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman lied through her sparkling ivories as she told a House subcommittee that she did not mislead Ground Zero rescue and clean-up workers when she asserted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that the air was safe to breath and the water safe to drink.
And if there was any misleading, she disingenuously added, it was because the experts had given her bad information. Wink wink. Nod nod.
* Over in the Senate, one of President Bush’s staunchest supporters became the latest Republican to acknowledge the obvious: The Iraq war is a disaster and it is time to bring the troops home. Said Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
“Our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond. Our continuing absorption with military activities in Iraq is limiting our diplomatic assertiveness there and elsewhere in the world.”
* Down Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House, administration mouthpieces continued to defend Vice President Cheney’s bizarre view that he is his own planet and can orbit the presidential sun in any damned way he wants when he wants.
I don’t know which is more frightening: The prospect of surviving the remaining 18 months of the Bush presidency or the spectre of a man who is an irregular heartbeat from the presidency taking over should anything happen to the president.
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3 Responses to “Washington: The Fire This Time”
Calm down and grow up.
Are these brilliant decisions? No. Are they unspeakably political? No more so than many of the decisions the Supreme Court has rendered in the past, like Roe vs. Wade. The Supreme Court has moved to the right with the appointment of Roberts and Alito, but it really hasn’t been the catastrophe that some of the pundits present. Free speech in the public schools has some limitations. This isn’t the end of the world. Allowing religious denominations to work among the poor is not an evil.
Less political, far less activist and controversial than Roe v. Wade, Reynolds v. Sims, and so on.
It is not as far now to the left, and not as activist, as before, which has the Usual Suspects angry.
“Bush administration extremism”? Nonsense.
“right-winger zealots”? Please. Spare us.
“Christie Todd Whitman lied”? How do you know?
“The Iraq war is a disaster and it is time to bring the troops home.” Retread from how many times before?
“he is his own planet”: Hyperbole.
“I don’t know which is more frightening…”: Retread.
One of the court rulings was in defense of the First Amendment, in fact, about political ads, which are the kind of true free speech that the Amendment was specifically meant to protect! (as opposed to anti-religious misconstruction…)