Politics

Chevy Chase wrote a great peice in the NY Times saturday about his friends Gerald and Betty Ford. Betty Ford inspired Chevy to kick his own drug dependency. Chevy and Gerald appear to have shared quite a close friendship.

I highly recommend:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/opinion/06chase.html

Here is an exerpt: while their wives, Betty and Jayni, were struggling to get a VCR system to work Chevey suggested he and Gerald should pitch in. Gerald replied:

The US House ethics committee has reported findings on the Foley case. The NY Times reports:

"The panel said it found no evidence that any current lawmakers or aides violated any rules. But it said it discovered a pattern of conduct among many 'to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences' of Foley's conduct."

So negligence and aiding and abetting sexual harassment of minors is not against the US House ethics rules.

Why am I not surprised by that.

“If you’d been part of the president’s motorcade as we’ve shuttled back and forth,” he said, reporters would have seen that “the president has been doing a lot of waving and getting a lot of waving and smiles.”

- Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley on Bush's visit to Vietnam.

That's how Bush opened his post-2006 election news conference today.

Why indeed? Democrats in. Republicans & Rumsfeld out. It was a good day, so long as you aren't a Republican.

Republicans have good reason to be glum. Even with huge money and gerrymandering advantages in most races, many Republican incumbants lost by large margins.

[img_assist|nid=25|title=LIBERAL!|desc=Attack ad paid for by the Alabama Republican Party (Oct. 28, 2006) against Carolyn Ellis (D) running for Alabama State Representative for House District 79 in Auburn, Alabama. Didn't you know? She's a LIBERAL!!|link=popup|align=left|width=100|height=73]

Even in Alabama, Republicans seem a bit desperate. Why else such vicious attack ads? Ellis is (gasp!) a LIBERAL! To be sure, Ellis's ads against the Republican incumbent are no less mean. She call's her opponent, Hubbard, a conservative.

"It's vile. It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction."
--Mark Foley on Bill Clinton, September 1998.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901574.html?nav=trm

The bad news: the chair of the House caucus on missing and exploited children is, well, a pedophile.

The good news: he's a Republican and now maybe a Democrat will be elected.

To top off a busy week, Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) resigned. It seems he took his position as chair of the House caucus on missing and exploited children a bit too seriously. A real family man with good family values.

It was a good week for Republicans. In their final days this session (and hopefully their days running Congress), they have managed to pass no less than three bill which undermine the US Constitution. And a fourth bill walls us in. Literally.

Torture and wiretapping were legalized and a few bricks were removed from the wall between church and state (presumably we need those bricks to keep the Mexicans out). One might think none of these bills would withstand court tests, but the US Supreme Court ain't what it used to be.

1. Detainee Bill (aka Torture Bill)

AP reported today that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the popular former mayor of Mexico City, plans to form a parallel government claiming the election court did not take seriously his claims of fraud in the recent Mexican presidential election.

The US Supreme Court on June 29, 2006 ruled 5-3 the Bush tribunals for Gitmo prisoners were not authorized by Congress and violated international law:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/washington/30hamdan.html

The dissenting opinion points out that nothing prevents the Bush administration from seeking Congressional authorization.