Party Time!

Bonus: this is actually yesterday's post, but it didn't get posted yesterday because Blogger was having issues.

OK, so I was cranky. Mercury's in retrograde and it was cloudy. I'm entitled.

Why single-party government has no credibility in this country: From NYT:

Moving to tamp down Democratic calls for an investigation of the administration's domestic eavesdropping program, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that they had reached agreement with the White House on proposed bills to impose new oversight but allow wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days.

Horselaugh of the week:

"We are reasserting Congressional responsibility and oversight," [Sen. Olympia J] Snowe said.

How can anyone not see where this is going?

The measure would require the administration to seek a warrant from the court whenever possible.

If the administration elects not to do so after 45 days, the attorney general must certify that the surveillance is necessary to protect the country and explain to the subcommittee why the administration has not sought a warrant. The attorney general would be required to give an update to the subcommittee every 45 days.

"Whenever possible"? From a president who didn't want to use the existing system because he felt providing justification for eavesdropping was too great an infringement of his powers? I really like the part about "the attorney general must certify that the surveillance is necessary." This is the attorney general who thinks the president has the authority to do whatever he wants whenever he wants.

This is interesting. From Wonkette:

Unfortunately anonomizers don't work out here (never have). Anyway, I had a few minutes today and thought I'd look and see what else was banned on the Marine web here. I think the results speak for themselves:

* Wonkette - “Forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com/) is categorized as: Forum/Bulletin Boards, Politics/Opinion.”
* Bill O’Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) - OK
* Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) - “Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.”
* Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) - OK
* ABC News “The Note” - OK
* Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) - “Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.”
* G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) - OK

Control information, and you control the Marines. Can we dare suggest that the military is becoming an arm of the Republican party, like the MSM? (I'm told by a correspondent in the military that these are merely warning windows and can easily be bypassed. Porn is verboten, period, but sites with political content are not. I do, however, find it instructive that these warnings are posted to begin with.)

This comes hard on the heels of a news items about that really stupid, bigoted congresswoman from Colorado -- sorry, can't think of her name -- senior moment here -- having uniformed military personnel at a Republican fundraiser, which happens to be against regulations. (She's running scared, so she's got to hide behind a uniform. I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of that in coming months.)

Musgrave -- that's her name. The really vicious one. From Colorado, as opposed to the really vicious one from Ohio. This story from AmericaBlog. Further alerts from Josh Marshall here and here:

The existence of this ban and the enforcement of it are hugely important both to good order and discipline within the military and to preserving our democratic republic. The military can't be made into an arm of one or the other political party. Nor can the executive be allowed to enlist members of the armed forces, either individually or en masse, willingly or not, as soldiers in his domestic political battles.

Another insight into Musgrave's character, again from Josh Marshall:

The uniformed member of the military who appears at such an event can be court-martialed for the violation. It's not some technicality in UCMJ terms. But there's no law against a politician or party leader putting them up to it or facilitating it. So there's no risk for them.

So Musgrave and whomever else organized the event is putting this guy's career on the line as well as encouraging this misconduct for their own partisan gain.

Maybe I wouldn't worry so much about one-party government if I thought anyone involved had any glimmerings of adequacy. Unfortunately, that seems to be only a fond wish at this point.

I refer you once again to David Neiwert's essays on the rise of Fascism.