Shakesville

Grooming Time

My cat Olivia has taken to “grooming” me while I’m writing. She sits on the back of my chair and starts to sniff and nudge my head. For some reason, my hair is most attractive when it is half wet and half dry after a shampoo.

If I lean forward, she reaches out and tangles her claws in my hair to pull me back toward her.

Then she starts licking my hair.

I swear she would do this all day and night if I didn't constantly thwart her attempts to become a salon diva.

Meanwhile, Matilda sits with all her 15 pounds wedged between my back and the chair, in her continuing effort to make me a hunchback. I couldn’t get a picture of that, but I did get a picture of her making herself comfortable in the chair, which she does every time I get up for more than two seconds.

Part Two: Mockery

All right, have at it, Shakers...

Give us your best effort at a slogan mocking the idiot Dems. The separate thread for genuine entries is below.

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, see here.)

Part One: Genuine Entries

All right, have at it, Shakers...

Give us your best effort at a Dem '06 slogan. This is the thread for real attempts at coming up with a decent slogan. I'll put up a separate thread for mockery.

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, see here.)

TDS

In case you missed it last night, Daily Dissent’s got video of Jon Stewart interviewing Bill Kristol, which was very funny.

Kristol has the dubious distinction of being the only person who doesn’t make me want to put my foot through the TV when I see him interviewed even though I disagree with him on very nearly everything under the sun. He has kind of a nice, nerdy personality that I like; it’s just too bad he’s such a misguided lunatic.

Who’s Getting Paid for This Shit?

If only I were laughing because this is a joke:

The Hill: "House Democratic leaders are holding a closed-door meeting with members of their caucus this afternoon to discuss a new slogan for the 2006 midterm elections: 'Together, We Can Do Better' or 'Together, America Can Do Better,' according to Democratic sources."

Over the last few weeks, the phrase "has become a common refrain in Democratic leadership statements, usually appearing at the end of Pelosi's press releases or sprinkled liberally in Reid's comments."

Chris Bowers comments: "I suppose it is impossible to ever be excited about a quick catch phrase. This is especially true in politics, where pretty much every catch phrase long ago reached the lowest level of cliche hell."

Cliché hell?! That piece of shit slogan aspires to cliché hell.

Aside from the language itself being about as inspiring as a stinky wet sock, the sentiment behind “We Can Do Better” rings appallingly devoid of what I can best describe as self-esteem. The Democrats have internalized the old “at least we’re not the Republicans” chestnut to such a sickening degree that they’ve turned it into their blasted slogan. Why oh why oh why oh why are the Democrats allowing their own message to reinforce the notion that the GOP is “the norm,” so inescapable that the Dems’ own party identity must even abstractly reference the GOP, in answer to the question of whom, exactly, they can do better than.

Beyond its insipidity, this asinine slogan says nothing new. The Dems have been going on about how they’re better than the GOP for years, but what we have here is a failure to communicate how they’re better, so the American people don’t believe them in large enough numbers to vote them into office. It’s a rehash of the same strategy to position themselves as a milquetoast alternative, wrapping it up with an inoffensive little bow and hoping it can compete with the three-ring circus of insanity the GOP puts on for its base.

The Dems need to get back to the drawing board ASAP, because this is pathetic. For crying out loud, I’ve seen high school student council campaigns with more gusto. Pfft.

Fitzmas Update

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has decided to seek indictments in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and has submitted at least one to the grand jury, those close to the investigation tell RAW STORY.

Fitzgerald will seek at least two indictments, the sources say. They note that it remains to be seen whether the grand jury will approve the charges.

Those familiar with the case state that Fitzgerald likely will not seek indictments that assert officials leaked Plame's name illegally. Rather, they say that he will focus charges in the arena of lying to investigators.

We'll find out this week.

Time Imitates Art

Via Mannion, who got it via Linkmeister, comes TIME Magazine's list of the 100 Best English-language Novels published since 1923. Link explains, “Why 1923? Because that's the year Time started publishing.”

Whatever, Time.

Link notes the list is “highly subjective,” as these lists tend to be, and Mannion takes issue with some of the list's rather strange choices, particularly Gone With the Wind:

But it's on the list for the same reason Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Are You There, God? It's Me Margaret are on it---so that there are novels that the average TIME reader will have read. All of those, except for Gone With the Wind, are good books too but they have another virtue as well. They are all standards of high school reading lists, which means that teenagers can have a connection with the list.

I think something else seems to have influenced the list. Take a look at it. Does it also strike you, by any chance, that an inordinate number of books on this list have been turned into films that are either award-winning, regarded as classics, or have a cult following? I suspect many of these books would likely be off our collective radar (not to mention left off this list) had they not been turned into films of some acclaim.

Unlike Mannion, I happen to like Naked Lunch, but I don’t think it belongs on any “best” list, aside from perhaps “Best Books Written by Morphine Addicts Who Killed Their Wives During a Game of William Tell.” (In fact, I think it’s a shoo-in for that list.) If David Cronenberg (following not long after the 1985 documentary Burroughs) had never turned Naked Lunch into a film, which quickly developed a devoted following and introduced a whole new generation to its author’s work, I daresay the novel in question would have escaped consideration by the compilers of this list.

And I wonder if even a book like To Kill a Mockingbird, which inarguably deserves its place on the list, is offered some advantage because of the spectacular film made of its story.

In any case, these lists usually suck, and this one’s no different. Until I see a Best of… list that contains Parts Unknown, Life of Pi, and The Secret History, I’ll remain decidedly unimpressed.

Death of 2,000; Dearth of Ideas

The death toll of US troops in Iraq has hit the 2,000 mark, so what does the administration plan to do about it? Page 3 in the playbook—send out Bushie-Boy to give a speech at Bolling Air Force Base today.

Bush will try to put the sacrifice in perspective by portraying the Iraq war as the best way to keep terrorists from striking the United States again, the official said. He will make the same case in another speech Friday in Norfolk.

Wow, fucking genius!

Although Bush has made this case often, aides hope the public will be more receptive in the aftermath of the apparently successful referendum vote for a new Iraqi constitution, whose official results will be announced this week.

Good luck with all that.

Failing to have come up with any new ideas for dealing with the onslaught of bad news resulting from five years of dreadful policy, the Bush team has decided to borrow a page from some other bloke’s playbook:

Consciously or not, Bush seemed to echo that line last week in the Rose Garden when he was asked about all the problems afflicting his White House. Dismissing all the "background noise," Bush said, "the American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to."

"I think I've heard that one before," Mark Fabiani, a former Clinton White House lawyer, said with a laugh yesterday. "But it comes down to the person. Anybody can deliver the line. The question is: Can you compartmentalize these issues so they don't consume you? And I think Bush's job is more difficult than Clinton's because the questions here go right to the heart of the presidency."

Indeed. And I think the country as a whole was better off when the questions just went to the pants of the presidency.

For a start, we didn’t have 2,000 dead soldiers to mourn.

RIP: Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks was 42 years old when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man who demanded it 50 years ago. Her act of defiance got her arrested—and galvanized a civil rights movement, inspiring legions of people to speak up and demand change. She was a hero to lots of people, and I count myself among them. When Skippy recently asked for a list of the most important Americans, she was on my list. When Toast recently asked with which 5 living people we’d like to have a beer, she was on my list. I can remember hearing the story of Rosa Parks and her act of civil disobedience for the first time, when I was a little girl, and how I thought, “That’s the kind of person I want to be.”

Her eyes tell her story.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called her the "mother of the civil rights movement,” and by the end of her life, she had received both the Presidential Medal of Freedom (in 1996) and the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor (in 1999) for her outstanding contributions in making America a better place for us all.

Every reason to smile:
A genuine American hero.
Her work isn’t done, and we must carry on what she started in her mold—one person, deciding to take a stand against injustice, and making a difference.

"I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die — the dream of freedom and peace."

Now It Goes Big Time

So says The Heretik, linking to a report in the NY Times, which contains the following:

I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Oh yeah. There’s more. Like:

[T]he evidence of Mr. Cheney’s direct involvement in the effort to learn more about Mr. Wilson is sure to intensify the political pressure on the White House in a week of high anxiety among Republicans about the potential for the case to deal a sharp blow to Mr. Bush’s presidency.

Heh. Ya think?

Shakers, get your Fitzmas lists ready and put out some milk and cookies. Merry old St. Patrick is bringing us pressies this week!

Question of the Day

Today’s QotD was requested by Shaker Leslie, who notes that anyone who answers “It was a dark and stormy night” will be chastised severely.

What’s your favorite opening line from a novel?

I’ve noted before that mine is the first line from A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so.” Mr. Shakes’s favorite is from Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So…what’s yours?

A-holes

The entire debate about whether pharmacists should be allowed to refuse to dispense certain drugs based on their personal beliefs makes me fucking sick, because there’s just no way to justify revictimizing someone who’s been sexually assaulted by refusing to give them the peace of mind they so desperately need.

After a sexual assault one recent weekend, a young Tucson woman spent three frantic days trying to obtain the drug to prevent a pregnancy, knowing that each passing day lowered the chance the drug would work.

While calling dozens of Tucson pharmacies trying to fill a prescription for emergency contraception, she found that most did not stock the drug.

When she finally did find a pharmacy with it, she said she was told the pharmacist on duty would not dispense it because of religious and moral objections.

"I was so shocked," said the 20-year-old woman, who, as a victim of sexual assault, is not being named by the Star. "I just did not understand how they could legally refuse to do this."

But many stores are. A 2004 survey of more than 900 Arizona pharmacies found less than half keep emergency contraception drugs in stock, with most saying there is too little demand, but some cite moral reasons, according to the Arizona Family Planning Council.

Someone show me in any religious text where it says anything that could remotely be construed as endorsing this kind of behavior, anything that would indicate it’s more moral to add to someone’s suffering just to keep your conscience clean.

The statistics are creating what advocates say is a frightening situation for some women. But others are glad pharmacists have a choice.

Pro-choice for pharmacists…but not for rape victims. Stellar.

See, here’s the problem, you daft pricks—not everyone in Arizona shares your beliefs, and so subjecting women who don’t to laws rooted in that belief is bullshit. Anyone who doesn’t want to use emergency contraception, doesn’t have to, so changing the laws so that everyone is beholden to your beliefs is ridiculous.

These people have no perspective. Their individual beliefs aren’t more important than a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. The temerity of suggesting that they have all the answers, that they know what’s best for other people—how about we all be left to make those decisions for ourselves?

The thing that makes me really nuts is that there isn’t a shred of evidence that criminalizing abortion, emergency contraception, and/or birth control would actually reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies (or abortions). What does aid in achieving that goal, however, is comprehensive sex education and easy access to contraceptives. Until these jerkoffs get real and start advocating for the latter, I will refuse to believe that they have any genuine interest in what they claim. This isn’t about babies; it’s about women, and being able to control them by taking away their control over their own bodies.

Women Are Crap

I think I’m going to make that the new tagline of this blog. Shakespeare’s Sister: Women Are Crap.

As you would expect, such a brilliant statement can only come from an advertising genius. His name is Neil French, and he’s the now-former world creative director of Londaon- and NY-based marketing giant WPP Group. I don’t know why they canned him. I mean, this stuff is pure gold:

French made the contentious remarks during an industry discussion in Toronto on Oct. 6. According to a report in the city's Globe and Mail newspaper, French said women did not make it to the top because "they're crap."

Nancy Vonk, a Toronto-based creative director at WPP subsidiary Ogilvy & Mather who attended the event, said French described women as "a group that will inevitably wimp out and go 'suckle something.'"

[…]

Singapore-based French — who during the Toronto event was served drinks onstage by a woman in a French maid's uniform — was unrepentant.

Classic.

I’d like to write more about how inspiring Mr. French is, but I’ve suddenly been overcome with the urge to suckle something, so I’m off to roam the streets in search of a wailing infant to whom I can offer my teat. I’m hoping to find a thoroughly Dickensian wee bairn, dirty yet cute, who will enrich my life with its old soul and penchant for joyful utterances in the face of adversity.

Baldwin

So far, my favorite commentary on Kay Bailey Hutchison’s asinine attempt to spin Plamegate on Meet the Press this weekend (she hopes “that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars") is Alec Baldwin’s at HuffPo:

If you check the online record you will see that this is the same Kay Bailey Hutchison that voted in favor of both counts of impeachment against Bill Clinton. More disturbingly, she writes in the Congressional record dated February 17th, 1999:

"I do not hold the view of our Constitution that there must be an actual, indictable crime in order for an act of a public officer to be impeachable. It is clear to this Senator that there are, indeed, circumstances, short of a felony criminal offense, that would justify the removal of a public officer from office, including the President of the United States. Manifest injury to the Office of the President, to our Nation and to the American people and gross abuse of trust and of public office clearly can reach the level of intensity that would justify the impeachment and removal of a leader."

My question for today is: Why are contemporary Republicans so full of shit? And a follow-up...How did the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and General Eisenhower get taken over by such lying, thieving, self-serving scoundrels?

Why are contemporary Republicans so full of shit? Ha! Good question.

Not to disparage Baldwin, who seems like a smart enough fella, but how FUBAR-ed is this administration that people who play make-believe for a living are searching through the Congressional record to prove what lousy, lying dolts its pathetic defenders are?

New Fed Chair Announced

The AP reports that Bush has chosen top White House economic adviser Ben Bernanke as Greenspan’s successor. Just the fact that he’s this White House’s top economic adviser makes me think he’ll be a disaster, but Brad DeLong, who knows a hell of a lot more about this stuff than I do, says it’s a good choice (upon which I hope and expect he’ll elaborate later).

As for the Dems’ reaction:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid issued a statement signaling the type of questions Bernanke might expect at his confirmation hearings.

"I look forward to the confirmation hearings to learn more about Mr. Bernanke's views on how the Federal Reserve should steer our economy free from political influence and interference," he said.

Reid, who has been sharply critical of Greenspan for supporting Bush's tax cuts, added, "It will be important that Mr. Bernanke demonstrate that he is committed to guiding the economy to produce results for all Americans rather than promoting partisan policies that benefit special interests and an elite few."

Okay. Does Bush actually appoint anyone who doesn’t promote partisan policies, though?

The Blame Game

It’s time to play the blame game—hey, not you, Democrats! You just keep your traitorous traps shut. It’s time for the president to play the blame game. The “frustrated, sometime angry and even bitter” Bush inexplicably “remains quite confident in the decisions he has made,” according to one of his political friends (whatever that is), in spite of the backlash against those very decisions, as support for the Iraq War diminishes, the bungling of Katrina’s aftermath takes a political toll, and his base revolts against Miers’ SCOTUS nomination. If you can believe this story (and I'm not sure we've any reason not to, considering the number of others of a similar tone that are suddenly finding their way into the press), he sounds like he’s practically on the verge of a meltdown, with his increasingly talked-about temper rearing its ugly head more and more frequently, as it gets directed now even at junior staffers, wild mood swings, and a delusional insistence that “history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections.”

But even as he preemptively takes the credit for this imagined legacy of success, he refuses to take responsibility for anything that has gone wrong.

At the same time, these sources say Bush, who has a long history of keeping staffers in their place, has lashed out at aides as his political woes have mounted.

"The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about," said one Bush insider. "Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big share."

The vice president remains Bush's most trusted political confidant. Even so, the Daily News has learned Bush has told associates Cheney was overly involved in intelligence issues in the runup to the Iraq war that have been seized on by Bush critics.

Bush is so dismayed that "the only person escaping blame is the President himself," said a sympathetic official, who delicately termed such self-exoneration "illogical."

Illogical is not only delicate, but kind. The guy is a narcissistic megalomaniac with a paranoiac twist, creating his own grand reality of which he is the flawless star; any perceptions of flaws with him or his decisions are the fault of everyone else. For honor and glory, the buck stops here, but for blame and shame, it stops there … and there … and there … and there. I’m not saying there were mistakes made, but if there were, they weren’t my fault!

The bubble has burst, and the boy inside isn’t very happy at all to be exposed to the real world for a change.

Fitzmas

Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald appears to be laying the groundwork for indictments this week over the outing of a covert CIA operative, including possible charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, lawyers involved in case said on Sunday.

Top administration officials are expected to learn from Fitzgerald as early as Monday whether they will face charges as the prosecutor winds up his nearly two-year investigation, the lawyers said.

Fitzgerald could convene the grand jury as early as Tuesday to lay out a final summary of the case and ask for approval of possible indictments, legal sources said. The grand jury hearing the CIA leak case normally meets on Wednesdays and is scheduled to expire on Friday unless Fitzgerald extends it.

With a decision expected this week on possible indictments in the C.I.A. leak case, allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, is expected to announce by the end of the week whether he will seek indictments against White House officials in a decision that is likely to be a defining moment of President Bush's second term. The case has put many in the White House on edge.

Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, have been advised that they are in serious legal jeopardy. Other officials could also face charges in connection with the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer in 2003.

Fitzgerald's most difficult and contentious choices -- whether to seek criminal charges -- remain to be announced, possibly this week. Yet in a case with huge political stakes for the White House, a portrait is emerging of a special counsel with no discernible political bent who prepared the ground with painstaking sleuthing and cold-eyed lawyering.

[…]

A critical early success for Fitzgerald was winning the cooperation of Robert D. Novak, the Chicago Sun-Times columnist who named Plame in a July 2003 story and attributed key information to "two senior administration officials." Legal sources said Novak avoided a fight and quietly helped the special counsel's inquiry, although neither the columnist nor his attorney have said so publicly.

What I’m not seeing is Cheney’s name anymore. Whether that means the media has just backed off the veep, or that the highest indictments we can likely expect are Rove and Libby, I don’t know. Got any thoughts?

Back in the Saddle Again

Hello, Shakers! I’m back from my weekend of wedding hijinks. The wedding was simple and beautiful, my sister looked smashing, and I was mocked incessantly by my new brother-in-law for crying during the rehearsal and the wedding and my toast. I just couldn’t help myself; I only have one sister, who I love hugely, and seeing her so happy and getting hitched to such a swell guy brought out my sentimental side. What can I say?

I also got to meet Mr. Bug’s (so named because I call my sister Bug) extended family, who were all incredibly nice. My nephew has 9 great new cousins, and new aunts, uncles, and grandparents, who he just adores—and soon, he’ll officially have a dad, too, when Mr. Bug legally adopts him. Truly the merging of two families, and a truly joyous occasion.

Enormous thanks to Misty and Patrick, who did an amazing job this weekend—I had lots of good stuff to read upon my return! You guys rock—thank you so much.

Keep on posting tonight, if you like. As for me, I’ve got to catch up on my blog reading, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.

silenced in action

I found this story via Matt @ The Tattered Coat:

Another milblogger has been shut down in telling his story. Daniel Goetz, who is currently serving in Samarra, Iraq (he is a "stop loss soldier", his contract was up in March); was featured recently as "Vet of the Week" on Operation Truth. These were Daniel's words then:

I am not alone in my anger and humiliation. When we were here in 2003, there was anger, but there is a difference between anger and bitter hatred. The atmosphere of discontent is thick and contagious. Even soldiers not stop-lossed feel The Betrayal. They know it might be them next time. Dissent will not change anything for us now because our voices are muted. Still, there is hope. It is that in twenty years, it will be these men and women in office. Perhaps, that alone should make me feel better. I don't think it is enough, though, for our wounded and fallen. I can't speak for them, of course. Not yet, at least.

[...]

[M]y colleagues and I would often patrol the streets of Baghdad with the infantry in a bid to quell boredom. We were also looking for hope among the Iraqi people; we could live vicariously through their optimism, and perhaps therein find meaning for our occupation. But hope betrayed us as the insurgency swelled. It was when the fighting began again in earnest that we left Iraq. By the end of August, I was back in The United States, free to pretend Iraq never happened.

But it had. And nothing could wrench the darkest memories from repression like the knowledge that we were to return. Worse, our year in America was wasted. Almost every week, CSPAN would feature one committee or another complaining that our armed forces hadn't enough servicemembers in critical jobs like intelligence and military police. I wanted them to know how poorly we were thought of in our own units, and how little job-specific training we received before we left. At one point, we were told to study Arabic only on our own time. That was hardly possible when we were kept late every night, sometimes doing only menial tasks like weapons-cleaning until three in the morning.

It is most likely that being featured on OpTruth's site is what brought attention to him. His internet time is not only restricted now, he was forced to put up a "Sir, yes Sir!" post (entitled "Double Plus Ungood"):

I thank all of you who have been so supportive recently. I have never before received so much positive feedback, and it was very heart-warming to know that so many people out there care. Having said that, it breaks my heart to say that this will be my last post on this blog. I wish I could just stop there, but I can not. The following also needs to be said:

For the record, I am officially a supporter of the administration and of her policies. I am a proponent for the war against terror and I believe in the mission in Iraq. I understand my role in that mission, and I accept it. I understand that I signed the contract which makes stop loss legal, and I retract any statements I made in the past that contradict this one. Furthermore, I have the utmost confidence in the leadership of my chain of command, including (but not limited to) the president George Bush and the honorable secretary of defense Rumsfeld. If I have ever written anything on this site or on others that lead the reader to believe otherwise, please consider this a full and complete retraction.

I apologize for any misunderstandings that might understandably arise from this. Should you continue to have questions, please feel free to contact me through email. I promise to respond personally to each, but it may take some time; my internet access has become restricted.

Freedom's on the march all right. Backwards.

oh what a beeeyoootiful morning....

What? Too early for cheery singing? How are you this morning, Shakers? I know someone who is already having a craptastic day, as this news hit the wires:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Texas officials paid Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' family more than $100,000 for a small piece of land in 2000 - 10 times the land's worth - despite the state's objections to the way the price was determined, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported Saturday.
The three-member committee that determined the price included Peggy Lundy, a friend of Miers, and property-rights activist Cathie Adams, Knight Ridder reported. They were appointed to the panel by state District Judge David Evans, who had received at least $5,000 in campaign contributions from Miers' law firm.

[...]

According to Knight Ridder, the land - which was part of a large Superfund pollution cleanup site - was valued at less than 30 cents a square foot. But the panel recommended paying nearly $5 a square foot for it.

The price was later reduced from $106,915 to $80,915, but Miers has yet to return the $26,000 difference to the state, said the story by Jack Douglas Jr. and Stephen Henderson.

``Nothing indicates that Miers sought out the judge or engineered the appointments to the panel, but there's also no indication that she reported the potential conflicts of interest in the case or tried to avoid them,'' the story said

Of course she didn't! That would require something called honesty and if we've learned anything about Bush's cronies, they're anything but honest (and they're greedy). She is sounding like a real peach to be a Supreme Court Justice, isn't she?

Sounds like Harriet and the Bush admin will be spending the day coming up with more bullshit excuses for the worthiness of her nomination. But me? Today I shall be packing for a surprise vacation, watching the Bengals vs. Steelers game (Who Dey, baby!), and heading over to the in-laws for a 93rd birthday party tonight. What are your plans?