Procrastinating on my important scholarly duties last night, I happened to flip by C-SPAN and discovered a somewhat spirited debate in the House on the subject of withdrawing the troops from Iraq. A long line of republican veterans came out to list silly, illogical reasons why ending the war would hurt the feelings of the troops. They kept aiming their arguments at Murta, the 37 year marine veteran democrat hawk who has recently turned against the war and drawn up a plan for a six month withdrawal. I missed the part where a republican rookie read a letter calling Murta a coward and got shouted down, but I still got the distinct impression that British parliamenterians were sending our congress some tips. I mean this was rowdy.

But all this talk about Murta and the screen was telling me it was a republican resolution that was being debated. I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on.

The resolution was “non-binding” and only stated that the House felt the troop deployment should be “terminated immediately.” Sounded kind of pointless but I was surprised it was actually being debated, even if only 2 democrats and 1 republican ended up voting for it. (read the rest of this shit…)

On Friday when the indictments fell down on Irve “Scooter” Libby Jr. for obstruction and perjury, the democrat line of the day was “it’s a sad day for America.” There has been a tremendous blow to the dignity of the White House, a stain not on a blue dress but on the presidency itself, etc.

I’m afraid I gotta disagree. It’s not a sad day. The sad day was when the leak happened in the first place. We all knew it happened and we all knew it happened in the context of much bigger crimes. Back then, we were happy to hear about an investigation, but did anybody believe it would lead to anything? Did anybody think it really meant anything when John Ashcroft, after noodling around for a little while, announced that he was recusing himself? Don’t you remember all the stories we read about how this was gonna be a whitewash, like so many other investigations? Did you ever believe that somebody as high up as Scooter Libby would even be criticized in the media, let alone indicted? (read the rest of this shit…)