Boy, when even Congressional Quarterly sees it...

When the normally extremely non-partisan Congressional Quarterly has an article essentially bitching about Pres. El Nino's hypocrisy on the issue of leaks from the administration, you know it's gotten bad out there.

In an article entitled "Indignation, Full of Holes," in this week's CQ Weekly, NBC/CBS' Craig Crawford writes:

"It’s a given that presidents relish leaks to the news media when it serves their purposes, and that they act outraged at leaks that do not make them look good. But George W. Bush’s relativism on this score is like watching a roller coaster on acid."

(read the rest at the link above.)

The State of the Nation is....Forgiving?

This Alternet story about the traffic in slaves was thought-provoking and horrifying. This U.S. State Department report from 2005 has the same effect.

But the Tier List, taken from the above mentioned State Department report, made me look twice. Look at who's on Tier 3, which is the worst offenders. Do you recognize the names of any of the United States' "good, strong allies" there? How about the ones on the Tier 2 Watch List (the ones heading to Tier 3 if they don't clean up their acts.)

If that were a United Nations report, I could almost understand how the State Department justified our alliances. After all, our present administration dislikes and mistrusts the U.N. in the first place. But this is an internal report, one done at the behest (well, officially at the behest, although it probably wasn't her idea to begin with) of Condi Rice, the Secretary of Helmet Hair and State.

We clearly forgive our allies for sins many of us cannot forgive ourselves. While our government tries to come to terms with African American descendants of slaves asking for restitution on behalf of their ancestors, it is silently permitting its wealthy allies to keep human beings, many of them extremely young children, in conditions of involuntary servitude that would have offended many of the most hard-hearted slave masters in American history.

Tipped by a story on Alternet.

Fallen Soldier Gets a Bronze Star but No Pagan Star

What more should we expect, considering Our Fearless Leader (pictured at left) has stated that he doesn't consider Wicca a religion?

DISPATCH FROM THE CEMETERY

Fallen Soldier Gets a Bronze Star but No Pagan Star

By Alan Cooperman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, July 4, 2006; Page A02

At the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in the small town of Fernley, Nev., there is a wall of brass plaques for local heroes. But one space is blank. There is no memorial for Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart.

That's because Stewart was a Wiccan, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has refused to allow a symbol of the Wicca religion -- a five-pointed star within a circle, called a pentacle -- to be inscribed on U.S. military memorials or grave markers.

(click link above for the whole story.)