Category Archives: Rascally Republicans

Let me count the ways…

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As a purely intellecutal exercise, I want to list the corruption lowlights of the Bush administration (both White House and Congress). I’ll start brainstorming and I’ll insert more in the days and weeks ahead.

Please, please feel free to contribute to this list via the blog comments or private email! I’m looking to fill out this list with more items and with links to relevant documentation. I’ll add the information to the main blog entry.

Let’s watch it grow!

Without further ado, in no particular order:

  • Plamegate: leaking names of covert CIA operatives ( ordered by the WH? )
  • Muzzling NASA scientists on global warming
  • Withdrawing from Kyoto protocols
  • Removing safe-sex and STD information from government website (NIH)
  • Using known faulty intelligence on WMDs to justify war on Iraq
  • Politicizing the faulty intelligence to justify the war on Iraq
  • Spying on private communications, including those between US citizens, without a warrant, not even the super-double-top-secret-court ex post facto warrant
  • No-bid contracts for Haliburton in Iraq
  • No body armor or other infrastructure for American troops fighting in Iraq
  • Reduced social programs
  • The above while the rich get their taxes cut
  • Cheney’s secret energy task force
  • Sealing daddy’s presidential records
  • Limited, screened access by the press
  • “Free-speech zones” to hinder protests
  • Terry Schiavo: limited government advocates mis-diagnose via satellite

Snapshot of a partisan mindset

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Cindy Sheehan wasn’t the only one removed from the SOTU address on Tuesday. So was the wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.), for wearing a shirt that said “Support the troops.” Rep. Young got really incensed on the house floor yesterday and eventually got an apology from Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer.

Here’s the kicker, though:

Young said he wouldn’t be so mad if it were just Sheehan. “I totally disagree with everything she stands for,” he said. But by removing his wife, Gainer’s officers clearly “acted precipitously,” Young said.

This incident is very telling: at least this one member of the self-professed “small-government” party feels it fundamental that heavy handedness be kept in check so long as you agree with him. Everyone else is “the other” and can fend for herself..

Contrast this with the more liberal view that, for better or for worse, we are all in this community, society, planet together, and abuses against one are abuses against all. Contrast this clannish outlook on the world with principled view epitomized by Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”