July 9 - 15, 2007

Hi Lauryl,

Here are some things from the past week you may find entertaining:

Everyone had only glowingly positive things to say about the former First Ladybird, who passed on last Wednesday. I have nothing to add here, except that I wanted to take this opportunity to say, "the former first Ladybird".

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David Vitter is one of those pro-family blah-blah-blah'ers, who took over the VA Senate seat resigned by another pro-family blah-blah-blah'er, Bob Livingston, back in '98 during the Lewinsky non-issue when Larry Flynt outed his (Livingston's) extramarital affairs. Well, Vitter came public with his own extra-marital affairs last week when Larry Flynt threatened to out them.

But Vitter vehemently denies visiting the prostitutes in New Orleans. It was strictly the D.C. Madam stuff, yessirrie.

Anyway, I don't especially care about his hypocrisy. What I think is funny found interesting is what his wife said to the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 2000. She was asked about the stand-by-your-man decisions Hillary had made over the years in her marriage with Bill. And she said:

I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he [Husband Dave] does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me.

This week she announced that she has forgiven him of all his indiscretions.

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You can now buy square watermelons.

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I'll try to be quick about this one, since it's sure to have its sequels in the weeks to come. Sara Taylor is a flunky from Karl Rove's office who'd worked there from right out of college (2004ish) until she resigned earlier this year to pursue other opportunities. John Conyers and Patrick Leahy, chairs of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, wanted to know what she knew about the firings of the US Attorneys, and so dragged her in for some questions Wednesday. On the advice of the President, she refused/declined to answer pretty much everything she was asked, beyond name, rank, and serial number. (Although after refusing to answer the same question early on, she did say late in her testimony that she'd not discussed the attorney firings with Bush.) It was awkward, and it didn't look good for the administration.

So when the time came the next day for Harriet Miers to drop by and answer some questions about the same stuff, Bush's solution was to tell her just not to show up at all. His claim here is that (1) executive privilege allows him not to cooperate with Conyers and Leahy, and (2) he's being cooperative. Because as usual, the administration is offering up this nonsense deal about allowing interviews in closed session without transcripts or even note-taking allowed. Which is why the subpoenas were issued in the first place that led to this (lack of) testimony.

Well, great: so now Leahy and Conyers can just place their two interviewees in contempt of congress (which apparently allows them to physically detain Misses Taylor and Miers) and let the courts sort it out, right? But it's not clear whether that's smart. Six years of Bushdom have sufficiently stacked the Federal courts with moon-eyed conservatives that it's quite possible any ruling would be in his favor. Which would help establish precedent for a very broad interpretation of executive privilege and of presidential power generally.

So it's dicey. We'll see where it goes.

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The no-progress report offered about Iraq Wednesday was roundly debunked by Fred Kaplan at Slate. A good article to look at. Summary: Bush reports genuine progress in Iraq in only 8 of 18 pre-defined areas. You will surely be shocked to learn that he's taken liberties with both facts and logic to help himself to even that middling level of optimism.

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In Senate debate on Defense spending this last week, Jim Webb (D-VA) proposed an amendment to the appropriations bill which would give troops as much time stateside between deployments as they're required to spend in warzones abroad.

Before joining in a successful Republican effort to filibuster that one, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said about Webb's amendment, "It would be a dangerous precedent to allow troop rotations to be regulated by politicians looking toward the next election."

Well ain't that funny. Isn't that exactly what Webb's amendment was meant to prevent?

P.S. Webb and Graham were both invited onto Meet the Press Sunday, which led to an entertaining, if not illuminating, smackdown.