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Is deception the best way to serve one's country? (07:02) - In 1982, in a restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico, former Texas governor John Connally told me he thought the Warren Commission report on President John F. Kennedy's death was a whitewash. But he never spoke out publicly about his doubts and believed that helping preserve the public deception was the best way to serve his country.
Friday 24 March
Liar's poker (07:03) - Almost any debate about the problems facing the United States and its faltering government centers on truth - or the lack of it. Truth is an unneeded commodity in the political system that defines the American government. Even worse, truth...
Thursday 23 March
Bush just can't stop lying (08:05) - Americans who tuned in for one of President George W. Bush's rare press conferences saw a cornered animal trying to squirm his way out of trouble by doing what he has always done - evading the truth....
Wednesday 22 March
Bush faces his own war at home (10:07) - While President George W. Bush jets around the country trying to convince skeptical Americans that Iraq is not lost and headed for civil war, he faces a uncivil war at home within his own White House and the Republican Party....
Sunday 19 March
The sum of all tears (10:22) - Regular readers of our blog, Blue Ridge Muse, know the story of Loki, our little black kitten with the terminal neurological condition that will end his life all too soon. Loki is a “feral” cat, born in the wild. He...
Friday 17 March
Republicans say Bush's arrogance is his downfall (11:21) - Sit down with a Republican member of Congress, party leader or political strategist and you hear a recurring theme: President George W. Bush has gotten too big for his britches and needs to be taken down a notch or two....
Wednesday 15 March
Going from bad to worse (04:14) - Nearly three years ago the United States of America took the unprecedented step of invading a country that posed no immediate threat to our security, launching a war based on fabricated intelligence, false assumptions and outright lies. Today, as that country plunges headlong into civil war, our leaders continue to fabricate claims of improvements, make false promises of progress and lie outright about our prospects. Their missteps have cost thousands of American lives along with the lives of tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
Tuesday 14 March
Follow the money (07:25) - An old rule that prosecutors follow when it comes to tracking criminal activity is "follow the money." In most cases, money is both the cause and effect of illegal activity. Same for politics.
Monday 13 March
A sickness called Potomac Fever (07:05) - Does the heady atmosphere of Congress turn honest men and women into a criminal class? Or is elected office simply a magnet for those who lie, cheat and steal for a living? Political scientists and Constitutional scholars say it could...
Sunday 12 March
A call for a New American Civil War (07:03) - It's time, I think, for a New American Civil War. Oh, I'm not calling for American citizens to take up arms and storm the White House and Congress. Instead, I'm suggesting we all need to step back, take a deep breath, and reexamine the entire concept of political and social discourse. America is embroiled in an uncivil war - a battle defined by coarseness, division, bitterness and rancor. We substitute name calling for debate, anger for rational thinking and hate for understanding.
Friday 10 March
Typical political arrogance (10:40) - Typical political arrogance is a bipartisan Washington disease. It infects those in power, Republican or Democrat, with the belief they are above the law and do not have to answer to the forces of truth, justice or the American way.
Wednesday 8 March
What did you expect? (07:19) - In reality, did anyone expect the Republican voters in Tom DeLay's district to send him packing in Tuesday's Texas primary? Get real. These are the same people who sent the Houston exterminator to Congress in the first place and keep returning him to Washington even though they know he's a crook whose ethics stink like a Texas swamp.
Tuesday 7 March
Telling the 'approved' story (01:12) - On an unspecified day last week an employee of a federal agency that cannot be revealed delivered a document that cannot be identified to a company that cannot be named seeking information that cannot be discussed.
Monday 6 March
Bush declares war on freedom of the press (07:44) - Using many of the questionable surveillance and monitoring techniques that brought both questions and criticism to his administration, President George W. Bush has launched a war against reporters who write stories unfavorable to his actions and is planning to prosecute journalists to make examples of them in his "war on terrorism."
Friday 3 March
Scum-sucking traitors to their country (07:04) - The next time some loudmouth partisan puke Democrat gets in my face and starts yapping about how much better things would be if his party were running the government in Washington, I'm going to pull out the vote tally sheet for the USA Patriot Act in Thursday's Senate session and ram it down his lying throat.
Thursday 2 March
Republicans fear Democratic gains in November could increase calls to impeach Bush (06:00) - GOP political strategists fear a shift in the Congressional seats from Republican to Democratic hands in the mid-term elections this November could spur a renewed movement to impeach President George W. Bush. "A possibility," admits political scientist George Harleigh, who served in the Nixon and Reagan administrations. "The margin of the GOP majority in both the House and Senate protects the President right now but a shift could build momentum to impeach."
Wednesday 1 March
Soldiers in Iraq know they are fighting and dying for a lie (02:26) - Nearly three-quarters of the American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should withdraw within the next year and 29 percent feel we should get the hell out of the war immediately, a poll of military personnel serving in country reveals. This jives with emails I've been getting from soldiers over the past several months and it confirms that those serving on the ground in the war don't share the rosy optimism painted by the Bush administration about the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Tuesday 28 February
Time to set truth free (07:37) - My high school Latin teacher loved the phrase Veritas Vos Liberabit - "The truth shall set you free." Nice sentiments - for the Romans. But in these politically-charged times, perhaps the operative phrase should be: "Who shall set truth free?" God knows there ain't a lot of truth floating around the halls of power in Washington these days. In fact, truth took a sabbatical decades ago - and never returned.
Monday 27 February
Mother's milk of politics: Mama plays both sides (05:40) - Money, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm once said, is the "mother's milk of politics." True enough and when discussing politicians lapping up all this milk we should remember that mom has two nipples: One for Republicans and the other for Democrats.
Saturday 25 February
Knowing the consequences (10:13) - Amanda, a long-time reader from Tampa, wants to know if I consider the consequences of what I write before publishing such stories. "It appears you enjoy stirring the pot," she wrote in an email. "Don't you ever worry about how what you write affects people?" Oh yeah Amanda. More than you know.
Friday 24 February
Civil war in Iraq equals monumental failure for Bush (01:20) - Deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, military professionals privately admit what the Bush Administration publicly fails to recognize - the United States veers dangerously on the precipice of its worst wartime embarrassment since Vietnam as Iraq plunges into an irreversible civil war.
Thursday 23 February
Yeah, we could making all this stuff up (00:29) - Whenever we get a story ahead of other news outlets the naysayers crank up to full crescendo and accuse us a variety of transgressions - usually revolving around the claim that we "made the whole thing up."
Wednesday 22 February
Cheney may have been drinking when he shot lawyer (07:31) - A written report from Secret Service agents guarding Vice President Dick Cheney when he shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington on a hunting outing two weeks ago says Cheney was "clearly inebriated" at the time of the shooting.
Tuesday 21 February
The S.O.B. has to go (01:57) - Bonnie Erbe, a columnist whose work I respect, writes elsewhere on this web site today that President George W. Bush should be impeached for his many high crimes against the Constitution of the United States.
Monday 20 February
Presidents' Day musings... (07:40) - Today is Presidents' Day, a combined holiday for Washington and Lincoln's birthdays and, in reality, more of an excuse for retailers to separate consumers from their money....
Saturday 18 February
Partisan political pukes (06:34) - Republicans are corrupt. So are Democrats. Republicans abuse power. So do Democrats. Republicans put their own narrow-focus, special-interest fed agenda ahead of the welfare of America. Got a newsflash for you. So do Democrats.
Friday 17 February
Traitorous bitches and bastards (06:21) - Those bagpipes you hear playing in the background provide a much-needed funeral dirge for freedom, which died this week at the hands of the United States Congress. Freedom has been on its deathbed for about five years now, mortally-wounded in the post-9/11 frenzy that put political expediency above the Constitution and gave paranoia supremacy over what used to be guarantees of individual rights for all Americans.
Thursday 16 February
This dog don't hunt (06:03) - Vice President Dick Cheney's half-hearted public acknowledgment of responsibility for shooting a friend in a hunting "accident" last Saturday highlights a growing rift between President George W. Bush and the man many believe actually runs the government of the United States.
Tuesday 14 February
Business as usual at the Bush White House (07:04) - With Vice President Dick Cheney's bungled attempt to hunt quail without shooting another hunter, the White House once again proved it cannot even report on an accident without attempting to avoid blame.
Monday 13 February
Is the President above the law? (07:42) - Most of the news stories about the Meet the Press debate Sunday on President George W. Bush's domestic spying program centers on comments that both Democrats and Republicans now feel the program is useless because al Qaeda knows the NSA is listening and they won't use cell phones to discuss their plans. But that's not the real story that came out of the Sunday's political circle jerk. The real story is that Pat Roberts, the arrogant Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told show host Tim Russert that he believes the President of the United States is above the law and can do whatever he damn well pleases.
Friday 10 February
Intel pros say Bush is lying about foiling 2002 terror attack (06:56) - Outraged intelligence professionals say President George W. Bush is "cheapening" and "politicizing" their work with claims the United States foiled a planned terrorist attack against Los Angeles in 2002. "The President has cheapened the entire intelligence community by dragging us into his fantasy world," says a longtime field operative of the Central Intelligence Agency. "He is basing this absurd claim on the same discredited informant who told us Al Qaeda would attack selected financial institutions in New York and Washington."
Thursday 9 February
John Boehner is just another Tom DeLay (01:58) - Rep. John Boehner came to Washington after the 1990 elections claiming to be a great reformer. In reality, he is just another politician on the take, out to milk the system for all he can....
Wednesday 8 February
They came to praise King and bury Bush (01:05) - By DOUG THOMPSON George W. Bush’s pathetic attempt to turn Coretta Scott King’s funeral into a politically-advantageous photo op fell flatter than his State of the Union speech Tuesday – a textbook example of just how out of touch the...
