The Republican Party had the entire United States of America from whom to chose their nominee for the US Senate seat in Illinois. Demonstrating quite clearly the kind of party they are, they chose Alan Keyes. From Maryland.

On Tuesday, Keyes called the "Vice-President's" lesbian daughter Mary Cheney, a "selfish hedonist" apparently solely because of her sexual identity.

He did both that, and took a swipe at married couples who either can't, or choose not to have children all in one fell Republican swoop.

Said Mr. Keyes in a satellite radio interview this week:

So there ya go. You folks in the "married state" out there who have no children, are apparently "selfish hedonists" along with lesbian Mary Cheney. You, like those homosexuals who'd like to simply be recognized as a legitimate American family seem to have an "improper basis" for your marriage according to your party's national pick for the U.S. Senate.

Bush/Cheney '04: What's not to be proud of?

Ann Coulter makes Bill O'Reilly appear - if only briefly - to not be a hideous person with an evil insidious agenda! Not all that easy to do. But if anyone can, it would be the insipid Ann Coulter.

This sample exchange, and it's "Editor's notes" come courtesy of "Left I..." as taken from the full O'Reilly Factor transcript from May 27, 2004:

We've been on the road for the past few days, and thus not locked into our usual media routine. Out here, in the desert, we get a dose here and there of Cable News, though without the erstwhile FOX News drone to keep us as aware of what the Evil Doers are up to.

Rush comes in partially, with much static, so I haven't been able to keep up with the Right Wing Marching Orders with my usual alarming up-to-the-moment accuracy. Nor have I had any Internet Access for the last 3 days or so, so please pardon me if I'm missing a beat or two, and - unbeknownst to me - the entire Blogosphere is abuzz with this already. But from here, I've got just one big question since last Sunday's Bob Woodward explosions on 60 Minutes.

(DISCLAIMER: Both CBS, the producer of 60 Minutes and Simon & Schuster, publisher of Woodward's Plan of Attack are owned by the same parent company, Viacom. I have watched CBS before and have read books published by Simon & Schuster. As well, I have also watched both VH-1 and MTV on several occasions. Both of those cable channels are also owned by the parent company Viacom.)

So, anyway...The various Cable News programs we've been able to catch since Sunday, seem to be dwelling on the Powell-outta-the-loop and Bush-Saudi-low-oil-prices-before-the-election issues.

Yes, the most alarming item from Woodward on Sunday to my ears, was the bit about Bush having diverted some $700 million from the Congressionally approved Afghanistan spending over to a secret unapproved pre-Iraq War effort.

So my question is this...If Bill Clinton lying about a blowjob is an Impeachable offense, how can it be that subverting the US Constitution by diverting $700 million to a Congressionally Unapproved project by the this Administration barely raises an eyebrow by anyone? Both the House of Representatives (responsible for instituting Impeachment Proceedings) and the supposed "Liberal Media" seem to be completely ignoring the issue.

Now, I realize that the House is controlled hard by Republicans, but where is that supposedly "Liberal Media" on this one? And how can even the supposedly "Conservative" Republicans in the House sit by and ignore such a blatant disregard - if true - for the United States Constitution by this Administration?

Surely there must be at least a couple of intellectually honest Republicans out there who are outraged enough by this report to begin a very serious investigation into this very serious alleged breach of ethics by this Administration. No?

Can you imagine the Republican apoplectics that would be occurring today if it was Bill Clinton (or John Kerry!) who was reported to have done such a thing?

As Bill Bennet would have certainly asked in such a situation had this been a Democrat at the helm, "Where's the outrage??"

Or is it out there and I'm just missing it?

Is it just me? Or is this odd? From a press session Monday morning with Bush in North Carolina:

...Okay...and then, shortly after, this:

...Touchy?...The rest of the session then rambled as follows, with this burst seemingly out of nowhere. Picking up precisely where the above left off, which was the only allusion to 9/11 at all to this point:

Wish I had seen the above on video, cuz the official transcript from the Whitehouse just reads...like he's coming unglued? Bizaare...

On the front page of Rush's website today, you'll find the following link to a transcript from a call about Condi Rice: "Like Clarence Thomas, this self-made black leader must be destroyed..."

Apparently, this is the stunning next chapter in the Right's desperate attempt at the Defense of Condi Rice. This bizarre strategy was first floated by Bob Novak last week when he sandbagged Rahm Emanuel on Crossfire:

Huh? Emanuel was as flummoxed as I was by the odd question.

I believe it was The Daily Show who later complimented Novak on having "played a race card from a deck which nobody even realized had one".

A day or two later, like clockwork, one of Brad Blog's favorite DittoHead commenters did his good soldier Right Wing Echo Chamber duty by repeating the suggestion: "I hope it doesn't turn out to be a 'high-tech lynching of an uppity black.'"

Mission accomplished.

Have we ever seen an Administration so freaked out by the merest suggestion that they - perhaps - haven't done everything perfectly? It's rather astounding to watch.

Are these guys that desperate to defend Bush at all costs that they're already falling back to the Clarence Thomas "defense" here? Apparently so. Last week Rush answered a Liberal caller's question about why --- if the Bush Administration had such a wonderful Anti-Terrorism program from Day 1 --- why it wasn't actually ever implemented until after 9/11.

The answer was classic Rush. First, he informs us, it was because the Bushies were too busy at first because the Florida Election Debacle cost them so much valuable time that they had to work with Clinton Appointees like Richard Clarke (never mind that he was actually a Reagan appointee - DittoHeads aren't big on Facts).

But then there's this:

Well, okay. I guess that explains that.

I guess I'll have to do some research on Condi to find out exactly where "she didn't have to use affirmative action." Perhaps she was admitted to Yale with a C+ grade average and received a Legacy admittance like Dubya. I'll get back to you on that.

By the way, if you do click-through to the Rush transcript posted above, be sure to note the section where Rush has been going on and on, until the caller finally breaks in with:

I hate it when those callers filibuster poor Rush and never let him get in a word edgewise. Classic. And the DittoMonkeys eat it up.

As the bad news for the Administration continues to unfold over the next several months (continuing trouble in Iraq as we approach 1 July, a passel of new books that they won't be able to stand any more than they could stand Richard Clarke's, the 9/11 Commission Report, as well as fallout from the widening investigations of the outrageous and still under-reported Medicaire hoax and the growing Plame outing scandal) someone is gonna have to take a fall or two for Bush's re-select chances to survive.

Thus, I offer my stunning prediction that at least two of the following will not be a part of the Administration by the time we get to November 2nd. CYA Mitigator --- While I believe at least two of them will actually resign, the worst case scenario is that instead of actually resigning they will announce *ahead* of the election that they will not be serving in a second Bush term:

(Listed in order of likelihood that they'll be gone - sez me)
George Tenet
Richard Foster
Dick Cheney
Karl Rove
Paul Wolfowitz
Condoleezza Rice
Colin Powell

Anyone I missed?

On late Friday afternoon --- the best time to hide embarrasing information from the news media and the public - Colin Powell finally admitted in regards to his United Nations testimony that would eventually send this country to war and 600 Americans (so far) to die, that the information he presented now "appears not to be the case that it was that solid."

Um, duh? Anyway, will anybody ever take any responsibility for this debacle? Powell seems to continue the idea of blaming it all on the Intelligence Agencies. So, who is it who takes responsibility for those agencies anyway? Apparently nobody.

It's nice occasionally to come across the intellectually honest Conservative. A rare breed these days. So it was nice to catch this blog item from Andrew Sullivan today. Of note...

Not sure if it's because he's British or gay, but it's certainly nice to see a bit of both "nuance" (overworked word of the year so far in 2004) and honesty from the Right.

So the Whitehouse has finally come to their senses and will "allow" Condoleezza Rice to testify in public under oath before the 9/11 Commission. How very thoughtful. I guess I was wrong, they really do wish to investigate what went wrong that day and how it might be avoided in the future.

But wait, another caveat or two from the Whitehouse counsel before proceeding:

...That way, they won't have to bother with cleaning up any inconvenient loose ends in the future.

Furthermore, they care so much that they will not only have the President testify (in private, not under oath) to the Commission, but they'll be kind enough to throw in the Vice-President on that same day, at that same session at no additional cost! More from the counsel to the President:

Why waste time asking the President and Vice-President to testify separately, when they can be in the same room at the same time in a "joint private session" to keep their stories straight and avoid any confusion?!

These guys are amazing.

From Drudge just now...

...Could that be right? Condi's first testimony was not even allowed to be recorded? By order of the Whitehouse?!

So she not only had to testify under oath, but they wouldn't even allow the session to be recorded or a stenographer to take a verbatim transcript of the National Security Advisors testimony with the Commission investigating the greatest National Security failure in the history of our nation!

Man...Of course, the pundit echoes continue to the effect of "We've heard Condi on every show in the world, clearly she has nothing to hide! She should testify".

The more I keeping hearing that "Condi has nothing to hide" from the talking heads, the more I begin to wonder if she must!

Keep in mind, all the Whitehouse "precedent" protestations aside, including Condi's own tortured logic on 60 Minutes, to wit:

...Which is valid only if you disregard Sandy Berger (Clinton's NSA) and Zbignew Bzerzinksi (Carter's NSA), both "sitting national security advisors" at the time having testified in the past and consider their testimony to not have been about "policy" but about a criminal investigation. More to the point, though, the precedent being shoehorned into this situation concerns an NSA testifying before Congress. The 9/11 Commission, however, is not "congress". It was created by a vote of Congress with it's Head chosen by the President of the United States. A fact conveniently omited by the dubious and ultimately self-defeating explanation from Condi and friends.

As, once again, Josh Marshall so brilliantly put it:

UPDATE: Since writing the above yesterday, when this site was down due to a network outage, the Whitehouse has finalized their "accommodation" with the 9-11 Commission for Condi to testify. Well, that took long enough, huh? More on that shortly....

Never one to shy away from tooting my own horn, regretfully or otherwise, I came across this item this morning about a crop of babies born in Gaza today, named after the Hamas Leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated yesterday by Israel.

On September 14th, 2001, I wrote a "Speech to the Nation�were I President" to no one in particular that I shared only with my family and a friend or two at the time (the family, by the way, was quite critical of it).

Reading the news item above, I recalled the following paragraph from that "speech":

I've heard Bush and Israeli Officials over the last 24 hours describe Yassin as "Israel's Bin Laden". And today, we seem to - quite literally - have quite a few more "Yassins" born in his place.

Something to ponder as we continue down the short-sighted, narrow-minded, fear-based, vengeful, seek-and-destroy strategy currently employed as our own "War on Terror". I have no reason to believe that this strategy will work any better for us than it has for Israel.