Pot-Pourri

I just read a really scary post by Glenn Greenwald about Boy George at neocon school. Oh... My... Gawd...!

Stelzer's account provides truly illuminating insight into what neoconservatives have been filling the President's head with for years now, and demonstrates how they have managed to keep him firmly on board with their agenda. The most critical priority is to convince the President to continue to ignore the will of the American people and to maintain full-fledged loyalty to the neoconservative agenda, no matter how unpopular it becomes.

To do this, they have convinced the President that he has tapped into a much higher authority than the American people -- namely, God-mandated, objective morality -- and as long as he adheres to that (which is achieved by continuing his militaristic policies in the Middle East, whereby he is fighting Evil and defending Good), God and history will vindicate him

Senate Votes Overwhelmingly To Allow Debate On Withdrawal From Iraq!

Little by little, the dam is beginning to crack: The Senate just voted overwhelmingly to allow debate on a proposal that would pull the troops out of Iraq by 2008. The vote was 89-9, according to C-Span.

Perhaps it's a sign of the times -- or a sign of how procedurally screwed up the Senate is -- that it's big news that the Senate has agreed to merely discuss this proposal.

Fired attorneys say apologies are in order:

One of eight U.S. attorneys fired in a controversial Justice Department shakeup said Tuesday that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should rethink the dismissals, and two others said apologies were due.

[...]

Gonzales announced Tuesday that his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, had resigned over the firings and admitted that "mistakes were made." But he said all the prosecutors were political appointees who could be removed "for any reason," and he stood by the firings.

"My question is, if he fired the guy who fired us, why is he standing by the dismissals?" McKay asked.

It's The Reason, Stupid:

So, I would suggest that we stop discussing this in terms of a "purge" or "firings" because the truth is that the firings in themselves are not the problem. It's the reasons for the firings. These prosecutors were removed because they failed to prosecute Democrats for political reasons --- or they insisted on prosecuting Republicans on corruption charges. (One was removed in order to give a patronage job to Karl Rove's little buddy and the fact that it was in Arkansas should not be ignored. Hillary Clinton is running for president, after all.)

Read the whole piece, it's good, as Digby always is, but the story about how Daddy Bush made life miserable for a Republican prosecutor who refused to be corrupted, is especially note-worthy. As Digby tells it, this man responded with "a roar of conscience":

“I know that in investigations of this type,” he wrote in a remarkable memo to his boss, “the first steps, such as issuance of … subpoenas … will lead to media and public inquiries of matters that are subject to absolute privacy. Even media questions about such an investigation in today’s modern political climate all too often publicly purport to ‘legitimize what can’t be proven’ ….

“I must opine that after such a lapse of time, the insistence for urgency in this case appears to suggest an intentional or unintentional attempt to intervene into the political process of the upcoming presidential election ….

“For me personally to participate in an investigation that I know will or could easily lead to the above scenario … is inappropriate. I believe it amounts to prosecutorial misconduct and violates the most basic fundamental rule of Department of Justice policy.”