A Few Notes

There's been a lot of news lately. I'm busy, so I haven't been thinking much about it, but I wanted to post a couple unrelated notes.

1. Wow. Did the news ever get it wrong today. I was shocked by the sheer number of newspapers that led with color-photo-above-the-fold stories about the 12 miners being found alive. This is such a colossal "oops" I don't even have words for it. What a dreadful start to 2006.

2. Evidently, the President is above the law. I'm just gonna go ahead and link to Charging RINO (a RINO is a Republican in Name Only, just like I used to be). When El Arbusto signed the Defense Authorization Act with its anti-torture amendment and crowed about what a great thing it was, he wasn't being even remotely serious. Evidently, as Charging RINO will tell you, he released a statement when he signed the bill that indicates he feels he can ignore it any time he wants. Did you wonder about how he changed his mind so fast, one week saying the ban would hinder the war on terror and the next saying how great it was? Well, now we know; that's how long it took his lawyers to figure out how to get around the provision. As Charging RINO notes, the biggest concern we should all have about Judge Alito on the Supreme Court is not abortion or anything like that, but Alito's tendency to support broad expansions of executive power. The executive power is the most easily abused, the hardest to reduce once expanded, and should be the least trusted. Bush wants more of it. And, evidently, he wants to be above the law, too.

3. What a man is Jack Abramoff. For six or seven years he wrote down and kept copies of everything he did as a lobbyist, every dime he spent, every person he spent it on, and everything he asked in return. As Ron Gunzberger of Politics1 points out, probably the only reason he'd do such a thing is that "he was always concerned that someday he'd get caught and would need leverage to cut a good deal." This is going to be a fascinating season.