Jesus' toys!
The 10 most puzzling ancient artifacts

"Over the last few hundred years, many perplexing artifacts have been unearthed that do not fit the currently excepted theories of geology and the history of man." - read about them here (via Chapel Perilous).

Freedom. Democracy. Integrity
Let's get Jack Cafferty into the WH press pool.

CAFFERTY: Question of the hour is this - do you think it's an impeachable offense, impeachable, for the president to authorize domestic spying without a warrant?

Tom in Washington, Virginia, writes, "Yes, I do think that unauthorized wiretaps are an impeachable offense, as Nixon proved. Mr. Bush's contemptible administration believes that a frightened populace is more easily malleable, so they forever wave the bloody shirt of 9/11 to justify doing, well, just about anything they want. And if you disagree, then you're helping the terrorists win. But when was the divine right of kings reinstated? Did I miss a meeting somewhere?"

Zach in Chevy Chase, Maryland: "While the authorization of the spying itself might not be an impeachable offense, it is certainly unconstitutional as it skip the check and balance of judicial review. Whether or not you trust Bush now to only spy on terrorists is irrelevant. If this surveillance is found to be legal, any future president can spy on Americans for any purpose without any oversight."

Michael in Redwood City: "It's certainly more of an impeachable offense than was Bill Clinton's affair with Monica. George learned from Bill's experience, though, and avoided the perjury trap by admitting his transgression up front and then challenging us to do something about it. He probably won't be impeached, too many Republicans in Congress for that. But history won't be kind to him, either."

Joe in Sheepfuck, South Dakota: "Absolutely not. The Constitution grants no right to privacy, the courts have. Why don't we just hand over the entire playbook to the terrorists? The mainstream media seems to every time a covert procedure could gain an advantage."

Palm in Reynoldsburg, Ohio -- Pam, rather: "Does this mean Watergate was not a crime?"

And Lance in Madison, Wisconsin: "I'd love to chime in on your question today, but I believe my emails are being tapped, so I'll refrain from answering."

Besides, Xlintoon got a blowjob
Harry Reid once smiled while the Patriot Act was being signed, which means that he cannot oppose reauthorizing it now.

- shorter drudge.

Rule of law
What congresscritters are saying about the scandal that's teabagging the president -

"We took an oath of office, Mr. Speaker, to uphold the Constitution under our democratic system of government, separation of powers, and checks and balances. And we must fulfill that oath and send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial."

"How can we expect a Boy Scout to honor his oath if elected officials don't honor theirs? How can we expect a business executive to honor a promise when the chief executive abandons his or hers?"

"Freedom depends upon something. The rule of law. And that's why this solemn occasion is so important. For today we are here to defend the rule of law. According to the evidence presented by our fine Judiciary Committee, the president of the United States has committed serious transgressions. Among other things, he took an oath to God, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And then he failed to do so. Not once, but several times."

"When someone is elected president, they receive the greatest gift possible from the American people, their trust. To violate that trust is to raise questions about fitness for office. My constituents often remind me that if anyone else in a position of authority - for example, a business executive, a military officer of a professional educator - had acted as the evidence indicates the president did, their career would be over."

"Many have asked why we are even here in these impeachment proceedings. They have asked why we can't just rebuke the president and move on. That's a reasonable question. And I certainly understand the emotions behind that question. I want to move on. Every member of this committee wants to move on. We all agree with that. But the critical question is this: Do we move on under the Constitution, or do we move on by turning aside from the Constitution? Do we move on in faithfulness to our own oath to support and defend the Constitution, or do we go outside the Constitution because it seems more convenient and expedient? Why are we here? We are here because we have a system of government based on the rule of law, a system of government in which no one - no one - is above the law. We are here because we have a constitution."

"I am here because it is my constitutional duty, as it is the constitutional duty of every member of this committee, to follow the truth wherever it may lead. Our Founding Fathers established this nation on a fundamental yet at the time untested idea that a nation should be governed not by the whims of any man but by the rule of law. Implicit in that idea is the principle that no one is above the law, including the chief executive. Since it is the rule of law that guides us, we must ask ourselves what happens to our nation if the rule of law is ignored, cheapened or violated, especially at the highest level of government."

"You know, there are people out all across America every day that help define the nation's character, and they exercise common-sense virtues, whether it's honesty, integrity, promise-keeping, loyalty, respect, accountability, they pursue excellence, they exercise self-discipline. There is honor in a hard day's work. There's duty to country. Those are things that we take very seriously..."

"My preeminent concern is that the Constitution be followed and that all Americans, regardless of their position in society, receive equal and unbiased treatment in our courts of law. The fate of no president, no political party, and no member of Congress merits a slow unraveling of the fabric of our constitutional structure. As John Adams said, we are a nation of laws, not of men."

"It's a matter of considerable concern to me when our legal system is assaulted by our nation's chief law enforcement officer, the only person obliged to take care that the laws are faithfully executed."

"I believe that this nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law."

Q: OK, how many of these patriots are republican?
::
::
::
::
::
::
::
A: They all were. They're all House Republicans' statements at the time of Bill Clinton's impeachment.

Federal judge resigns over domestic spying

US District Judge James Robertson has resigned from the FISA court to protest the Dictator-tot's domestic spying program.

The action by Judge Robertson stemmed from deep concern that the warrantless surveillance Bush authorized was "legally questionable" and may have tainted the work of FISA.
****

"It's a good thing the [Iraqi parliament] elections didn't happen a year or two ago - having 30,000 fewer voters will make the ballot count a lot easier."



Cheney to critics: arrrrrrr!
You pussies! We're at war! You're all gonna die! Go fuck yourself, terrist-lovers!

VP Dick Cheney predicted a backlash against critics of the misadministration's spying on American citizens as he 'forcefully defended' a program that both Democrats and republicans say may have exceeded the Boy King's powers. He "guessed" that a "vast majority of the American people support" their efforts to subvert the Constitutionally-guaranteed rights of privacy and liberty of the American people.

Warm up the smear machine!


"You don't need BOTH kneecaps, do you, punk?"
*****

Do bears shit in the woods?
I was just over at my site tracker, and saw this as one of the site referrals:

20 Dec, Tue, 14:16:07 MSN Search: Are bush supporters retarded?

LOL.


Yup!

Honor and integrity
'Senate Majority Leader/douchebag Bill Frist's AIDS charity paid nearly a half-million dollars in "excessively high" consulting fees to members of his political inner circle, according to tax returns providing the first financial accounting of the presidential hopeful's nonprofit.

'Political experts said both the size of charity's big donations and its consulting fees to primarily political consultants raise questions about whether the tax-exempt group benefited Frist's political ambitions.'

After seeing a videocassette of the consulting fees, Bill Frist said they all looked legal to him.

Slay ride


Aahhh! Bing Crosby was a schlemiel who hated the baby Jebus, hated America, and wanted the terrorists to win! That does it - I'm deleting "Mele Kalikimaka" from my holi Christmas playlist...

Deficit-reduction bill sends Cheney rushing back to US
"[H]ow embarassing is it to need VP vote insurance when your own party controls both houses of Congress?" - firedoglake.


"Merry Christmas! Go fuck yourself!"
****

Quote of the day

"It's not an accident we haven't been hit since Bush started spying on Americans. Bush always said the terrorist hated us for our freedom. And now that we don't have our freedom anymore, the terrorists got the message they won."

- John at AmericaBlog.

Censure motion introduced in the House
Committee to be created to ascertain whether the Insane War Chimp can be impeached for abuse of power.
But... but... Clinton!

Rep. John Conyers has introduced a motion to censure Crashcart 'n' Chimpenstein for providing misleading information to Congress in advance of the Iraq war and for violations of international law.

Also introduced was a resolution to create a Select Committee to investigate the administration’s intent to go to war prior to congressional authorization. The committee would also be charged with examining manipulation of pre-war intelligence, thwarting Congressional oversight and retaliatory attacks against critics. As part of this resolution, House Judiciary Democrats seek also to explore violations of international law as pertaining to detainee abuse and torture of prisoners of war.

The Committee would seek to subpoena Smirky McFlightsuit and his misadministration in hopes of ascertaining if impeachable offenses have been committed.

Meanwhile, Senator Barbara Boxer says she's asked for opinions on impeaching the prezdint for authorizing spying on Americans without warrants.

Happy Holidays!
****

Go crawl back under the WH sheets, jerkoff

Attention whore and disgraced former reporter Bob Woodward claims to know who incontinent traitor Bob Novak's source was in the CIA leak case, and according to him it was not someone in the White House.

You irrelevant hack. How pathetic. We should believe you now why? Just STFU already.

Toe-cheese of Liberty
Canada calls Tucker Carlson a pussy-assed, no-dicked, bowtied fuckwit. Or they would, but they have more class than pimply pudfaced America-hating girlie-man Fuc Tucker Carlson.

Shameful act
A serious breach of national security the Constitution.

"Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power... Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story - which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year - because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker."

The New York Times has been scooped (again) -- on a big national story with sweeping significance. But now, it's not on CIA black prisons (that was the Washington Post) or the Pentagon's paid propaganda in Iraq (broken by the L.A. Times).

This time, the scoop is about a top secret meeting in the Oval Office, involving President Bush...and the two top officials of the New York Times. For the last four days, the Times has been writing about the domestic spying program of the Bush Administration, and they did indeed report that the newspaper's story was held for a year, give or take.

But not once in its coverage did the Times mention that publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and executive editor Bill Keller were summoned to the White House on Dec. 6, 13 days ago, in a last-ditch bid to get the newspaper to kill the story, which tonight has some members of Congress talking about impeachment. - Attytood.

The paper of record. The broken record for the Bush misadministration.

From a standoff over the Patriot Act to pushback from Capitol Hill on the treatment of detainees, secret prisons abroad, and government eavesdropping at home, tensions between the Bush White House and the Republican-controlled Congress have never been more exposed.

Even Republicans who favor renewing the Patriot Act were blindsided by news Friday, later confirmed, that President Bush had authorized secret eavesdropping on US citizens.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-Gofigure, called shenanigans. If the Boy King is 'allowed to decide unilaterally who the potential terrorists are, he in essense becomes the court,' Graham said on CBS's "Face the Nation." He also called for a congressional review.

Vice President Liar von Halliburton pompously weighed in and lied in an interview Sunday with ABC News: "It's the kind of capability if we'd had before 9/11 might have led us to be able to prevent 9/11."

I guess the PDB Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the US was just another goddamned piece of paper.

Fun fact: Quakers, librarians, the Catholic Workers' group and vegans are considered terrists by the Bush misadministration. Freedom.

Terra. Defeatists. 9/11
Bastioning freedom:

Bush said Monday he expected a "full investigation" into Jack Abramof shit why our troops still don't have body arm nope Tom DeLay's uh, no who fabricated evidence of WMDs ha ha, as if insider trading by Bill Fri who wiretapped Ameri leaked a CIA agent's na information about a secret wiretap program, saying it (the leaking) was "a shameful act."

9/11. Freedom. Democracy. 9/11. Terra
Emboldening the terrists. By taking away our rights.

More from today's press con:

Q: Well, without breaking any laws, and in five words or less, back on domestic spying. Wtf...

BUSH: Oh, I got you. Yes, sorry. No, I'm not going to talk about that, because it would help give the enemy notification and/or perhaps signal to them methods and uses and sources. And we're not going to do that. It's really important for people to understand that the protection of sources and the protections of methods and how we use information to understand the nature of the enemy is secret.

And the reason it's secret is because, if it's not secret, the enemy knows about it, and if the enemy knows about it, it adjusts. So it's actually gotta be double-secret.

And, again, I want to repeat what I said about Osama bin Laden, the man who ordered the attack that killed 3,000 Americans. That guy. We were listening to him. He was using a type of cell phone -- or a type of phone. And we put it in a newspaper -- somebody put it in the newspaper that this was the type of device he was using to communicate with his team. And he changed.

Yes, Saddam bin Laden attacked us on 9/11 'cause you libral scum traitor reporters wrote that we were tapping Ali Haji-Sheikh's cell phone.

"It's not spying, it's Freedom Listening!"
The Boy King pooh-poohed criticism over his decision to spy on US citizens without court warrants in a press conference on Monday and said he will keep it up "for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens."

When asked why he didn't go throught he appropriate courts to seek legal cover, Bush asked "why do you hate 'Merica?"

Q: Are you going to order a leaks investigation into the disclosure of the surveillance program? And why did you skip the basic safeguard of asking courts for permission for these intercepts?

BUSH: Let me start with the first question. There's a process that goes on inside the Justice Department about leaks, and I presume that process is moving forward. My personal opinion is it was a shameful act, for someone to disclose this very important program in time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy.

The second part of the question is -- sorry; I gave a long answer.

Q: It was: Why did you skip the basic safeguards of asking courts for permission for the intercepts?

BUSH: First of all, right after September the 11th, I knew we were fighting a different kind of war. 9/11. Freedom. Thank you. Happy holidays to you. Appreciate it.

Q: (OFF-MIKE) Fuckwit...

Well, #ucking duh
Congress slammed for kid-glove oversight of White House
GOP lawmakers have abandoned duties, say critics

After five years in which the GOP-controlled House and Senate undertook next to no investigations of the misadministration, the legislative branch has finally begun to complain about being in the dark.

Democrats list 14 areas in which the GOP majority has failed to investigate the misadministration, including the role of senior officials in the abuse of detainees; the leaking of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame; the role of Dick Cheney's office in the awarding of contracts to Cheney's "former" employer, Halliburton; the White House's withholding from Congress the cost of a Medicare prescription drug plan; the misadministration's rather incestuous relationship with crooked Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi; and the influence of corporate interests on energy policy, environmental regulation and tobacco policy.

Meanwhile, the House "ethics committee" has not opened a new case or launched an investigation in the past 12 months, despite an array of outside investigations involving, among others, Cunningham and Republican pet lobbyist/travel agent Jack Abramoff.

"Republicans have made a mockery of oversight," said Rep. Henry Waxman, the committee's ranking Democrat. "There was nothing too small to be investigated in the Clinton administration and there's nothing so big that it can't be ignored in the Bush administration."

Oh yeah, and then there's this. And this. And, uhhhhh, this.

- from the WaComPo. Mostly.
****

Cheney faces tough questions, skepticism from troops
"These colors don't run," Dick told Marines fighting in Iraq. "Unlike me during Vietnam."

The skepticism that Cheney faced during his top-secret, high-security - did we mention top-secret? - day-long visit reflects opinions back home, where most Americans say they do not approve of President aWol Warmonkey's handling of the war. It was unique coming from a military audience, which typically receives misadministration officials more enthusiastically.

"Mr Five Student Deferments can kiss my ass," said Marine Cpl. H. Jablowmie after the visit.

Why do the troops hate America?