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Showing posts from April 4, 2006

Chertoff flak has short eyes

Whatever it takes to be a political appointee at the Department of Homeland Security is something your cyberscribe does not want to catch. At the helm, an egocentric incompetent -- at least as a protector of the homeland -- reigns. We know how the administration gutted and screwed FEMA, replacing career emergency professionals with political hacks and contractors, the conditions that led up to the unnecessary loss of life wrought by Hurricane Katrina. We've known about the budget crunch in the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that saw inspectors unable to fill the tanks of their official vehicles last summer because creditors had cut off the government's gasoline cards. And the rigging of assignments in the Transportation Security Administration and Customs & Border Protect that were designed to purge the personnel roles. Despite your blogstress's familiarity with these and many, many more of DHS's messes, nothing prepared her for the news com

The Hammer is hangin' --
with Barney Frank?

Just as he made his mug shot a happy head shot, today Tom DeLay used the occasion of his imminent resignation from the House of Representatives, on the heels of a plea deal for a former aide who has pleaded guilty to being party to running a criminal enterprise out of the majority leader's office, to take something of a surreal victory lap around the political talk shows. Particularly strange was DeLay's turn on Hardball with Chris Matthews . After making a big fuss over DeLay's profession of faith -- even quoting a right-wing minister friend of the Hammer's who compared DeLay to the crucified Christ -- Matthews asked DeLay if he believed Republicans are morally superior to Democrats, DeLay said no. When asked to name a moral Democrat, DeLay replied, "Barney Frank," the openly gay congressman from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Even despite Frank's "lifestyle?" asked Matthews. "I don't agree with homosexuality," DeLay said,

Mon Dieu! L'hammer est fini!
(or, DeLay is done)

Yet another amazing day in Our Nation's Capital. It appears that we won't have Tom DeLay to kick around anymore. The bug-man is said to be ready to withdraw from his congressional race, with the Abramoff probe edging closer to his door. Though it appears the story was broken by Time , your blogstress herewith links you to The Washington Post , which has done such comprehensive work on the Abramoff scandal. Mes amis , let's all light candles for the rescue of the good people of the State of Georgia from the clutches of Ralph Reed, who is running for lieutenant governor. You see, Mr. Reed, once the choir-boy-faced evil genius behind the Christian Coalition, is quite caught up in the Abramoff mess himself, as Max Blumenthal reminds us . And so are Dobson and Minnery. How delicious it is to see the pious leaders of the right exposed for what they truly are. Of course, it won't make a whit of difference if no one in the opposition party stands up to say something like