bush

We are nine months into the reign of Obama Hussein the First…and the LAST if  Conservatives have anything to say about it. 2012 can’t get here soon enough.

His administration of this country to this point has been a pollyanna mixture of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, with a lot more Hyde than Jekyll…and something much more sinister thrown in. It’s not something you can point your finger at and say “aha!” It’s more an undercurrent that can be sensed and not so much felt, but no less palpable. It’s that sense of unease that the mariner gets with a huge storm over the horizon, or the farmer searching the skyline for signs of trouble ahead. Military men get it too just before the stuff hits the fan…you know it’s out there, you know it’s coming.

Obama was swept into power not by any great mandate of the people, for all the HUGE media circus that accompanied him. He barely won with 55 percent of the vote…and that only because Conservatives and Independents had deserted the Republican banner by the tens of thousands. Tired of George Bush’s big spending, big government Republican leadership, which most Conservatives saw as betrayal, many just stayed home. The Republicans had blown it badly…they had strayed so far from their largely Conservative base that to many they were indistinguishable from the opposition.

A war-weary country was ready for a change and many moderates saw Obama’s candidacy as a historic moment and a chance to put away the specter of race for good. Historic it was…putting the race issue away it wasn’t.

Obama and his apologist cronies have done more to Balkanize this country than anything since the days of the carpetbaggers during reconstruction after the Civil War. His mandate is that he hasn’t one. His racing as fast as he can for the far left, and Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s ideologically-driven push to socialize this country before it’s citizens awake from their self-induced and Liberal media aided deep sleep, has come frighteningly close to success.

However it’s not all going their way. Fully, 41% of Americans identify themselves as Conservative. Another 29% identify as Independents. Only 21% identify themselves as somewhat Liberal, while only 9% of the population identify as very Liberal. You’d never know it from the constant yammering and bleating of the fringe media. So much less effective than it used to be. Despite passage of the health care bill in the house by a mere 5 votes, passage in the Senate is unlikely this year, and next year is shaping up to be a bloodbath come election time. You see…they counted on us falling back asleep again and it didn’t happen. He never had the Conservatives and has lost the Independents and not a few of the liberals. Hey Barry! We’re awake…

Barry’s next move will be to prance off to Copenhagen attempting to destroy the rest of our economy. Yes it’s all his now…the economy, the war, Iran and the Mullah’s bomb. His affinity for all things Muslim. His denial of this country’s strong Judeo-Christian origins. Something he cannot and will not change despite any grandiose pandering pronouncement to a Muslim world which sees him only as a useful fool. His contempt for our military obvious in his speech, in his demeanor, in his actions…and most of all in his inaction. His contempt for YOU, the American citizen and patriot.

If I were mystery writer I’d have all the plot elements for a shoot em’ up spy thriller here…only I’m not. It is. And it’s scary as hell. Keep your powder dry.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

It’s driven me CRAZY for years…these clowns talk such a great game seeking our votes and then they go back to WASHVILLE…which was once a swamp…I’ll let you fill in the blanks. Maybe the British were trying to do us a favor when they burnt it down in 1814. It must be that moist, dank, swampy air that causes brain lesions in politicians as soon as they check into the Beltway. The Republican brand in particular is suffering from severe disillusionment, stemming from years of rank and file abuse by the party “leadership” which isn’t. You’d think the boneheads would get the message that’s been coming from the people ever since George Bush started taking America down the wrong fiscal path. Centrism and reaching across the ‘aisle’ has proven to be worse than a red herring time after time. Accommodation with the Democrats is like dropping into a den of rattlesnakes and blithely saying,  ‘ Why howdy neighbor” – and then being genuinely surprised at getting bit. If the base wanted you to make deals we would have said so. But then, you guys develop extremely severe hearing loss, along with your tunnel vision which comes with your SWAMP FEVER. And you wonder why you shed voters and support like needles on a month old Christmas tree. (Notice the non-use of the term holiday tree?). If this party is to re-emerge as the right-of-center party, capable of saving America from the voracious maw of Marxist tyranny threatening to overwhelm the Constitution and the rule of law as laid out in that Constitution and in our Bill of Rights, then it had best stand on its feet and proclaim to America and the world that, “WE STAND FOR AMERICA…this shall not be!” Say it loud. Say it clearly, without the usual mealy mouthed equivocation a la Lindsey Graham and the pathetic turncoats like him. Stand up and stand for something, or die for nothing. Stand up and America will follow. You can’t have it both ways.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

Picture the scene: a fairly popular President, having amassed a significant amount of political capital, decides its time to cash in and spend some on a tough reform effort for a failing, inadequate system. Many Americans agree that the status quo isn't acceptable long-term but hesitate to sign on to changes that they deem too risky. Members of Congress go out to their districts and are confronted at town hall meetings with frustrated, vocal constituents worried about the risks of the plan. The President's popularity outpaces his policies and in particular, this major reform package. Even with control of both houses of Congress, the package can't survive. The reform fails.

If you feel like you've seen this story before, you're not wrong. The trajectory of the 2009 health care debate seems eerily similar to that of the 2005 battle for Social Security reform. Taking a look at the polling from then and comparing it to the data of today shows the parallels in the situation and shows why the health care debate feels all too familiar.

Similarity #1: Presidential Popularity

First, take a look at a bit of a throwback post from 2006 at MysteryPollster.com where Bush's job approval from January 2005 forward is tracked. Bush began 2005 with job approval over 50% - slightly below where Obama started at the beginning of July (Gallup's 7/05-07/2009 poll had Obama at 56%). The trends are not dissimilar: Charles Franklin's plot of Bush job numbers from January 05 forward shows a similar shrinking of support that looks an awful lot like the Obama job approval chart on the front page. This isn't a particularly surprising finding, but provides context to the other more striking comparisons.

Similarity #2: The Agreement that the Status Quo is Unacceptable

In both the Social Security debate and the health care debate, Americans agree: the system needs major overhaul. While so many other issues fail to get Americans to agree with the crucial "we need to do something" sentiment, both Social Security and health care had that extra boost from a public that agreed: maintaining the current system is not workable long term. In February 2005, Gallup found 73% of Americans said Social Security was "in crisis" or "has major problems". (18% said Social Security was "in crisis").

Compare that to the health care debate of today. Gallup has found that 20% of Americans believe health care is "in crisis" and at least a majority believe it has major problems (unfortunately, Gallup doesn't tell us how large a majority). To flesh that out a bit, Gallup asked the question in November 2008 and found 73% of respondents said that health care was either "in crisis" or had "major problems". Does that number sound familiar?

Similarity #3: Issue Handling

By March 2005, Bush's numbers on issue handling of Social Security were brutal, with an ABC/WaPo poll showing only 35% approving and 56% disapproving. CNN/Gallup had even worse news with only 1 out of 3 approving. Compared to 49% approval shortly after Bush took office, once the issue became a hot topic, Bush's number tanked.

Similarly, Obama's numbers have plummeted on health care since before the debate. In April, during Obama's honeymoon, Pew showed Obama with a 51-26 advantage on health care job approval. By August, he had a 42-43 disadvantage - quite the fall from the earlier numbers. The idea that "the president is more popular than his policies" held true then as it does now. (Just take a look at Mara Liasson's February 2005 NPR story, titled: "Bush More Popular that His Social Security Plan").

In both cases, the President began his administration with the trust and support of the people to fix their given "crisis". In both cases, once the debate flared, their numbers dropped significantly. But it is worthwhile to point out that the comparison is not perfect - the Obama honeymoon numbers were immediately followed by the debate, while Bush had a full four years before tackling Social Security.

At any rate, this is just the basic side-by-side look at the reasons why this health care debate may seem like a bit of a "glitch in the Matrix", giving those who watch politics a sense of deja vu.

Because sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same. (This item has been cross posted at Pollster.com)

So it has been nigh on three weeks since the details of the Walpin case broke.  At about this time in the legal firing of 5 US Prosecutors there were calls high and low and everywhere you looked demanding Congressional inquiries and claims that President Bush had violated the law.  Now in the firing of an Inspector General we have a very clear violation of the law and where are the voices that were so righteously indignent?  One would almost think that perhaps the complainers were politically motivated.  Yes there have been a few stories but compared to the intensity of scrutiny Bush's actions received it is but a drop in the ocean.

There was something else though that struck me as not getting much attention.  Writing in the Washington Examiner (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Ger...) Byron York says:  "Since January of this year, the office has been headed by an acting U.S. attorney, Lawrence Brown, a career prosecutor who took over after the departure of the previous, Bush-appointed U.S. attorney. "

So think about that statement.  A Bush-appointed U.S. attorney left in January.  Was he fired?  How many Bush-appointed U.S. attorneys have left office since January?  Were they all fired much as Clinton did?  I honestly don't know.  I will admit that I have made only a cursory search but I found nothing about what President Obama has been doing with the U.S. attorneys.  Did our watchdog media decide that it was not something worthy of investigation and review?

Here's a bargain for you.  General Motors' current market value is about $500 million.  In a breathtaking abuse of executive power, the Bush administration "loaned" GM $13.4 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program ("TARP") in December, 2008, plus an additional $4 billion in February, 2009.  (Congress had not authorized the money to be "loaned" to GM.)  On June 1, 2009, the Obama administration announced that it would invest an additional $30 billion in GM.  About $41.2 billion of the "loans" will be converted into equity in GM, making the United States the principal shareholder with 60% of GM's stock.  You, the United States, have paid $41.2 billion for $300 million worth of GM stock.  Congratulations!  You overpaid for GM stock by 137 times its value.  

The bankruptcy petition GM filed this week has been its only reasonable course for a long time.  Bankruptcy protection will allow GM to shed assets and debt and renegotiate labor contracts.  GM's plea for your money to avoid bankruptcy on the ground that consumers would not buy their cars if GM were bankrupt never made sense, as the whole world has known for months that GM is insolvent.  Had there been enough leaders in Washington with the courage to reject GM's demands for cash, GM would have petitioned for bankruptcy months ago and might even have emerged from bankruptcy by now.   

The GM bailout is incredibly unjust.  Over 5 million people have lost their jobs since the recession began.  Those millions of Americans lost their jobs because their employers had to lay off workers to stay afloat, and those workers are no less important than GM employees.  But GM has political power, and those other employers don't.  GM's power has now forced all of us, including those people who have lost their jobs, to dramatically overpay to enable the failed automaker to postpone its inevitable bankruptcy until now.  It's just that simple, and just that ugly.

As economist F.A. Hayek argued for over sixty years, a free society does not exist to serve any particular goal.  Rather, it exists to enable the individuals in that society to pursue their own goals, which may be known to no more than a handful of other people.  In such a society, the law must be a predictable part of the background information that individuals use to plan as they pursue their own goals.  For that reason, it is essential that a free society be governed by general rules that apply to everyone equally.  In contrast, a society that is organized to pursue specific goals must be governed by commands to specific groups or individuals rather than general rules applicable to all, because achieving the chosen goals requires direction, not freedom.

In this instance, our federal government has decided that the automakers must not be allowed to fail at any cost, so it has commanded you to buy GM stock.  You have indeed paid an outrageous price for that stock, because the GM bailout cost more than money:  it was also a grave injustice.  And this injustice, like the bank bailouts that have made you the proud owners of failed financial institutions, is another step toward transforming our society into an organization that commands its powerless members to serve the interests of those with political power.  If you have never read Hayek's classic The Road to Serfdom, read it now. 

Scott Boykin is Chairman of the Alabama Republican Liberty Caucus

For Republicans in the Senate the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor is a lesson in the law of unintended consequences and another unfortunate legacy of the mistakes of the Bush administration.

I have occasionally defended some of Bush's well intentioned mistakes, but there's no way to put a happy face on this one, because it is going to put a woman on the highest court in the land who believes that judges should write the laws, that some racial and social groups are more worthy than others, that gun rights aren't really protected in the constitution, that government can seize your property without due process and give it to businesses and that free speech is a privilege granted by government to some and not others.

The problem which faces Republicans in this nomination, is that they will likely find themselves unable to filibuster or oppose Sotomayor with any vehemence because she is hispanic and a woman with a record of flaws which are ideological rather than ethical. Already great pressure is being exerted on GOP senators from party leadership to go easy on Sotomayor to earn some credit with the administration for the future. The fear is that opposition to Sotomayor may cost Republicans hispanic support at a time when they need every new vote they can get and when hispanic Republican politicians are rising on the national stage, increasing hopes for a breakthrough with that constituency.

The irony is that this would not be nearly as much of a problem for the GOP had it not been for a little noted failure of the Bush administration. The seeds of this situation were planted back in 2005 when Sandra Day O'Connor was retiring and Bush floated the names of a number of hispanic judges as potential replacements, including Emilio Garza, Alberto Gonzales and Consuelo Callahan. In each of these cases Democrat Senators told President Bush that he would face a filibuster against the candidate and his response was to back down and look for another nominee who was more acceptable to Democrats. The problem with this morally weak strategy was that it meant that despite his desire to apppoint the first hispanic justice, Bush threw away that opportunity and the chance it provided to score points with hispanic voters and now that opportunity has been handed to the Democrats.

In 2005 Bush should have picked the best qualified of the hispanic candidates -- probably Emilio Garza -- and nominated him and taken his chances with a filibuster. Or he could have nominated the ever-cooperative Alberto Gonzales with the specific expectation that he would be borked for the team. That would have put the Democrats in the position of having to attack and filibuster a hispanic nominee, costing them support in that community and making the administration and the GOP look like they were the ones fighting for the advancement of minorities in government. Even though the nomination might have been blocked the result would have been an enormous boost in popularity with hispanics for the Republicans and a ding on the civil rights record of the Democrats. It's also entirely possible that the Democrats might have been bluffing and would have backed down to avoid seeming hostile to a hispanic nominee.

As in other situations, Bush played politics like an amateur and failed to push what should have been an obvious advantage and the Republican party is still paying the price of that mistake. If Bush had played the situation the right way in 2005 then today Sotomayor would not enjoy the immunity conferred on the first hispanic Supreme Court nominee, the GOP would be stronger overall, and might be able to oppose Sotomayor if their ideological concerns are strong enough. But as a weakened party desperate to be liked, the GOP may very well have to bite the bullet, sacrifice principles again and roll over and accept Sotomayor despite her troubling record. And yes, you can blame Bush for it.

There have been previous reports that George Bush believed that God  chose him to be President and advised him to go to war in Iraq. In the past couple of weeks there have been reports that Donald Rumsfeld used Biblical imagery to influence Bush:

Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline secretary of defense, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”

This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine. On March 31, a U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” On April 7, Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.”

These cover sheets were the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence serving both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. In the days before the Iraq war, Shaffer’s staff had created humorous covers in an attempt to alleviate the stress of preparing for battle. Then, as the body counting began, Shaffer, a Christian, deemed the biblical passages more suitable. Several others in the Pentagon disagreed. At least one Muslim analyst in the building had been greatly offended; others privately worried that if these covers were leaked during a war conducted in an Islamic nation, the fallout—as one Pentagon staffer would later say—“would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

But the Pentagon’s top officials were apparently unconcerned about the effect such a disclosure might have on the conduct of the war or on Bush’s public standing. When colleagues complained to Shaffer that including a religious message with an intelligence briefing seemed inappropriate, Shaffer politely informed them that the practice would continue, because “my seniors”—JCS chairman Richard Myers, Rumsfeld, and the commander in chief himself—appreciated the cover pages.

As even at least one analyst at the Pentagon realized, the use of such language would have even worsened the belief in the Muslim world that the Bush administration was conducting a religious crusade against Islam. Rumsfeld felt it was more important to appeal to the mind set of George Bush:

The Scripture-adorned cover sheets illustrate one specific complaint I heard again and again: that Rumsfeld’s tactics—such as playing a religious angle with the president—often ran counter to sound decision-making and could, occasionally, compromise the administration’s best interests. In the case of the sheets, publicly flaunting his own religious views was not at all the SecDef’s style—“Rumsfeld was old-fashioned that way,” Shaffer acknowledged when I contacted him about the briefings—but it was decidedly Bush’s style, and Rumsfeld likely saw the Scriptures as a way of making a personal connection with a president who frequently quoted the Bible. No matter that, if leaked, the images would reinforce impressions that the administration was embarking on a religious war and could escalate tensions with the Muslim world. The sheets were not Rumsfeld’s direct invention—and he could thus distance himself from them, should that prove necessary.

So Rumsfeld thought he could impress his simple-minded boss by quoting the Bible. (The above article contains many other examples of problems with Rumsfeld.)

Just a few days ago Counterpunch reported that a new book by Jacques Chirac confirms previous reports that Bush used Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq:

In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.

In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:

“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle … and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:

“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”.

The article goes on to say that this has been confirmed in a book by Chirac:

The story has now been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book, published in France in March, by journalist Jean Claude Maurice. Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush’s invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs”.

In the same year he spoke to Chirac, Bush had reportedly said to the Palestinian foreign minister that he was on “a mission from God” in launching the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and was receiving commands from the Lord.

There can be little doubt now that President Bush’s reason for launching the war in Iraq was, for him, fundamentally religious. He was driven by his belief that the attack on Saddam’s Iraq was the fulfilment of a Biblical prophesy in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.

One of the more entertaining news stories from the last week is the squabble between RINOs Colin Powell and Dick Cheney.  Cheney observed on a talk show that he didn’t realize Powell was still a Republican.  Powell retorted that he was a Republican because he had voted for Republicans Reagan and Bush II as well as Democrats Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Obama.  Powell’s response makes as much sense as Cheney’s reputation for being a conservative, which nonsensically appears to be based on his advocacy for business interests and war in Iraq.

In itself, watching two big-government RINOs argue over which can claim the mantle of “Republican” is as meaningful as professional wrestling, but what is at stake today is what, if anything, it means to be a Republican.  In 1994, the Republican Party was on the brink of a ushering in a political realignment that would have made it the majority party for the first time since 1932.  Republican leaders won power by talking a big game of small government, but they didn’t mean a word of it.  As they gained power in Washington, the beltway Republicans proved that what they believed in was big, intrusive, lawless government.  The result is the last election in which big-government Republicans got the whipping they earned by years of misrule. 

Powell and Cheney should be irrelevant, so it matters that people listen to their “debate” over which is a Republican, precisely because neither of them should be a Republican.  Powell and Cheney illustrate two visions of a Republican Party without principle. 

Powell’s vision is one in which the Republican Party should seek electoral victories by appealing to the same people who vote for Democrats, so that the difference between the two parties is one of brand name only.  His view appears to be that competing parties foster debate and that debate is good as long as it is not based on any ideological difference.  This is the voice of one who came up through the federal bureaucracy and distrusts political principle absolutely. 

Cheney’s vision is one in which the sole governing principle is reason of state:  that the interest and well-being of the state itself is the value government exists to serve.  What matters to someone like Cheney is that the “right” people hold the reigns of power, and provided the right people are in charge, there should be no legal or moral restraints on government’s power.  This is the voice of the second Bush administration. 

Fortunately, we don’t have to accept either Powell’s or Cheney’s vision.  In fact, we can tell both of them that, however they may regard themselves, we do not consider them Republicans.  “I may be out of their version of the Republican Party,” Powell said of his critics, “but there's another version of the Republican Party waiting to emerge once again.”  Indeed, and therein lies our hope.  We have the benefit of two hundred years of political history in which successive leaders articulated and defended the principles of individual liberty, limited government, and constitutional government.  The likes of Cheney and Powell will be forgotten in a generation, and it is up to us to recapture our Party and provide the principled leadership our country needs now as much as ever. 

Scott Boykin is Chairman of the Alabama Republican Liberty Caucus.

I find it puzzling that I consistently see the same wrongheaded argument being presented to me by my Democrat friends in their desperate efforts to excuse the excesses of the Obama administration. I'll bring up something like massive troop deployments in Afghanistan and Pakistan or inprecedented deficit spending and corporate bailouts, and their rote reply seems to be that I can't criticize Obama because of all the terrible things that Bush did. Further, because I'm a Republican then I must be complicit in whatever crimes Bush committed and therefore am disqualified from questioning or criticizing Obama.

What they seem to miss here is that if the things Bush did were wrong, then aren't the same things still equally wrong when they are done by Obama? Aren't they even more wrong when they are done by Obama on a larger scale? Bush overspent and created deficits. Obama has already doubled his spending in a few months. Bush deployed hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, where our interests are at best debatable. Obama has done the same and is talking about a deployment more than double the size of Bush's biggest commitment to the region. I defy any Obama supporter to identify a qualitative difference between the excess spending and troop deployment of the Obama administration and that of his predecessor. There is certainly a quantitative difference. Obama has dramatically spent more money and put more lives at risk for less reason. If I'm disqualified from criticizing Obama because of Bush, then why aren't Democrats disqualified from criticizing Bush because Obama has done the exact same things and worse?

Their second error is the repeated assumption that because I bear the "Republican" brand I must have supported every Republican and every act of a Republican going back to my infancy. Apparently I have to shoulder the blame for everything both Bushes did wrong and presumably for the sins of Reagan, Ford and Nixon as well. Never mind that I actively protested Nixon's administration, wrote scores of articles critical of Bush and his policies during the last 8 years, and voted Libertarian in every presidential election since 1980. Does this mean that conversely they are going to accept responsibility for the Carter's loss of the Panama Canal, the Drug War, Vietnam and Jim Crow laws? Somehow I doubt it.

Their belief that all Republicans are the same ought to be embarassing, if they had any sense of shame. Their victory in the last election gives Democrats a certain level of arrogance and a tendency to gloat which is truly unappealing and apparently makes them immune to any obligation to think with any subtlety about political issues. They just can't grasp that Republicans are a diverse group. They assume that we're all warmongering, Bible-thumping reactionaries who are apparently on the verge of becoming domestic terrorists -- at least so Obama's Department of Homeland Security seems to believe. My actual beliefs seem to matter nothing to them -- as a Republican I can't possibly be pro-choice, areligious and generally opposed to unnecessary wars. They would certainly never believe that I know thousands of other Republicans who are politically active, share those views and were critical of Bush over these and many other issues.

You would think that some simple self-examination would enlighten them. Lyndon LaRouche, the Unabomber and Louis Farrakhan are or have been active members of the Democratic party and remain largely on the poilitical left. Does that mean that all Democrats share their views? There are even large factions within the political left and the Democratic party which don't agree with each other. Most of the Democrats I know aren't outright socialists or communists, but those philosophies thrive within the progressive wing of the party. Nativism and strong anti-immigrant beliefs are common among union Democrats, but many other Democrats remain liberal on the immigration issue. If their party isn't homogenous, why do they assume that all Republicans are the same?

This idea that the sins of one administration or political faction do not excuse the abuses of another also extends to foreign policy and seems to confuse the left there as well. When dealing with the issue of Iran, they always seem to fall back on blaming the United States because we put the Shah in power. Apparently we have to excuse the sins of the current regime because of the wrongs done by the Shah. Never mind that they killed more political dissidents in their first two years in power than the Shah killed in 17 years and have done more to limit freedoms for the general population and especially for women than the Shah ever did. It's the same with Israel. Because Israel is militarily aggressive and inhumane, it excuses every action of violent excess from the terrorist groups and equally aggressive and inhumane neighbors like Syria and Iran. Somehow Arab violence doesn't count because Israelis deserve it.

What they seem not to grasp is that wrong is wrong and right is right, regardless of the political persuasion of the perpetrator and regardless of the actions of others. You can't pick and choose between murderers and madmen and say that the crimes of one are excused because of the crimes of another. You can't excuse the policies of someone you voted for and criticize someone you opposed for policies which are exactly the same. While there may be different standards of what is right and wrong, whatever standards you choose to accept have to be applied uniformly. If you don't follow that rule and instead live by a subjective double standard which applies one set of rules to those you like and another to those you dislike, then you should expect rational people to dismiss your political opinions as worthless and brand you a hypocrite.

So please, the next time I criticize Obama or your favorite terrorists or Hugo Chavez, please keep in mind that the things they do should be judged on their own flaws and merits. Everyone is responsible for their own actions and nothing done by someone else excuses or justifies them.

When Obama was elected president and the democrats increased their control over congress by a wide margin last November, many on the left envisioned a delightful scene unfolding:

Picture it:

A federal courtroom, filled with reporters, foreign press, a presiding judge, and at the defendants' table, two well known figures in bright orange jumpsuits-Dick Cheney and George Bush.

"Would the defendants like to make a statement before I sentence them?" the judge asks. Bush looks around the room thoroughly confused, unaware of the gravity of his situation. Cheney, his arrogant sneer replaced by a look of anguish and despair, rises to speak, his leg irons rattling in the silent courtroom. "Your honor I would like to beg this court and the American people for mercy in this case . . .we were simply trying to protect . . ." The judge cuts him off. "Silence! The court will not hear of your lame attempt to defend the contemptuous actions of your administration!" Cheney slinks back into his chair.

The judge then reads the sentence "you will be confined to federal prison for the rest of you natural lives . . ." The crowd gasps as the two are led from the court by armed marshals. Justice! Sweet justice!!!! Church bells ring as people gather to in town squares across the land . . .

But that's not exactly how its played out . . .

 And of course, it never was going to play out that way. Trumped up charges of war crimes against political opponents works well in Banana Republics, but not in the United States of America.

 And now we are finding out that some of the very democrats yelling the loudest about "Truth Commissions" and "War Criminals" were indeed in positions of power and well aware -and even supportive- of the enhanced interrogation techniques they now are so appalled by. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are getting some very bad press as they try to find wiggle room foir their past positions on and knowlege of the issue. Pelosi's newsconference was hard to watch as she twisted and turned and generally looked guilty.

The truth it is said, will set you free. Partial truths will get the Speaker into very hot water.