Saturday Morning Stupid

HI!

There's a whole weekend here right now, get your lazy butts out of bed, get some coffee in you and get moving goofballs.

Couple of non-news news items for you to have with your coffee and cigarettes:

Justice Dept. Clears the Men Who Kept More Americans From Getting Killed.

If by "cleared" you can accept the stupid slapping and incoherent yammering from Pat Leahy.

The Justice Department is closing the books on its probe of the Bush administration lawyers whose legal memorandums authorized the CIA to waterboard terrorism suspects, but the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee says he remains offended by the memos and will hold hearings

An internal review said the department lawyers showed "poor judgment" but did not commit professional misconduct in giving CIA interrogators the go-ahead at the height of the U.S. war on terrorism to use harsh interrogation tactics.

I wouldn't care if these memos had recommended taking a blowtorch and pliers to KSM, and I suspect a lot of us feel the same way. I have the good manners to thank John Yoo and Jay Bybee for doing us all a service at considerable personal sacrifice.

Meanwhile, Obama seeks to improve relations with the Congress by providing them Commission Cover™, Republicans shuffle along with it.

Even as he unveiled an executive order creating the panel, President Obama acknowledged that he is asking its members to attempt "the impossible." For decades, budget projections have shown that rising health-care costs and an aging population would drive the nation deeply into debt. Government spending to ease the recent recession has accelerated that process.

Bi-partisan commissions are where the people who are actually entrusted with performing the duties of legislation drag a couple of former dinosaur public servants out of retirement (those who will actually retire) to make unpopular recommendations to the people responsible for things they don't have the stones to recommend themselves. Think "military base 'realignment'".

In this case, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson will lead the effort to take a hard look at the federal deficit, ignore reality, and tell Congress to raise taxes.

Obama says "everything is on the table". It's a remarkable gift, the ability to say clearly what clearly isn't the truth.

posted by Dave In Texas at 08:48 AM

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