Are we there yet?

No, not yet.
I think bloggers need to stop talking about impeaching Bush and Cheney and start talking about what exactly they have done wrong.
Half of the population of the United States did not vote for Bush and Cheney in either 2000 or 2004. Some statistics would appear to indicate that a quarter or more of Americans would now support impeachment.
But there will be no groundswell of support until a majority of people can see what illegalities have been committed. So far, its still sort of vague -- did they violate the FISA Act with the NSA wiretapping program? Did they violate the Geneva Conventions when they approved torture and rendition? Did they deliberately lie to start the war with Iraq?
But Bush and Cheney did it all with the cover of Executive Orders, they got some tame lawyer (AKA the Attorney General) to provide supporting opinions, and they even got some degree of Congressional support, back when Congress was majority Republican.
So the "high crimes and misdemeanors" still need to be identified and defined.
Nixon tried to cover up a crime (the Watergate break-in). Clinton lied under oath. In both cases, these were individual actions; they were done by the President without any legalistic "cover"; and they were done for a personal benefit -- neither Nixon nor Clinton could claim they did what they did to protect the nation. Also, it was pretty easy for the average person to understand what could be called "criminal" about these actions.
With Bush and Cheney, while their stupidity and incompetence and cowardice certainly disgust many Americans, this may not be sufficient to make a clear majority support impeachment. The specifics of the case have to be spelled out.

Stunts

This sounds like a stunt to me.
If the issue of allowing human rights complaints against band councils has been a problem since 1977, why the sudden rush to recall MPs to deal with it right now, over the summer?
Oh, yes, I forgot -- fall election coming up...

Great line of the day

Over at Canadian Cynic, pretty shaved ape expresses some shrill cynicism (quel suprise!) about our defense minister's recent Declare-Victory-And-Leave announcement:

"O'Connor was responding to new poll numbers that suggest support within Canada for the deployment is dropping while opposition is rising . . . During an appearance on CTV's Question Period that aired Sunday, O'Connor said those numbers are largely due to Canadians' lack of clear understanding of Canada's successes in Afghanistan, as well as the challenges faced there."

After half a freaking decade of action, as the mission steadily deteriorates and the liberation slowly decays into ineffectual occupation, as the will and patience of both the Afghan and Canadian populations erode, we just don't understand that our troops have Tim Horton's coffee. And according to big Steve our military just keeps getting better and better with every flag at half mast. Shame that Gordon O'Lobby can't seem to present a clearly understandable picture of our "success". So buck up anyway, whiners.

Hey, does anybody else smell a fall election being plotted?

Is everybody happy NOW?

Huffington Post reports on an interview with US National Intelligence Director Mitch McConnell talking about the CIA's interrogation techniques and the President's executive order:

The executive order bans torture, cruel and inhumane treatment, sexual abuse, acts intended to denigrate a religion or other degradation "beyond the bounds of human decency." It pledges that detainees will receive adequate food, water and medical care and be protected from extreme heat and cold.
It does not, however, say what techniques are permitted during harsh questioning of suspects . . .
When asked if the permissible techniques would be troubling to the American people if the enemy used them against a U.S. citizen, McConnell said: "I would not want a U.S. citizen to go through the process. But it is not torture, and there would be no permanent damage to that citizen."
Bush's order is intended in part to quell international criticism of some of the CIA's most debated work.

Yeah, I'm sure that'll do it alright.
The international community will be just so supportive of interrogation techniques which are too brutal to be used on US citizens. At least no one is losing an eye anymore, I guess.
Or maybe we're only supposed to THINK that the US is torturing people, but really they're not:

The order specifically refers to captured al-Qaida suspects who may have information on attack plans or the whereabouts of the group's senior leaders.
"Because they believe these techniques might involve torture and they don't understand them, they tend to speak to us ... in a very candid way," McConnell said.

I guess someone waving a soldering iron in your face could be one of those 'misunderstood techniques'.
Maybe Jack Bauer should try that.

My favorite commercial

See here for more info.

Saturday Night still lives

You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon and Chevy Chase

Good, better, best

Good

Mike Luckovich

Better

Jack Ohman

Best

Mike Luckovich

Great line of the day

From Ken Levin, writing about the 2007 Emmy nominations:

THE SOPRANOS was nominated for everything including best cartoon. Here’s what I hope happens. David Chase wins, goes up to the podium, starts to speak, and the screen just goes black.

Meeting Stephen

From the Globe and Mail comes this awful photo -- the cutline says Harper "poses with Haitians" at a Cite Soleil hospital during a one-day visit to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. But they all look just miserable, don't they -- was it something he said?

Do Ya Think She's Sexy?

A number of bloggers are annoyed and upset about this trivial, stupid article talking about how sexy Hilary Clinton was in a V-neck shirt. And rightfully so -- as MissLaura at Daily Kos points out:

This story is so inappropriate on so many levels my mind can't stretch to encompass them all. The notion that the outfit the Post pictures Clinton wearing was worthy of a single sentence is a sign of the idiocy of the traditional media. The story that resulted from that notion is unconscionable and appalling, piling paragraph after paragraph onto the added burden women in the public eye already face.

Still, though, I think this article represents a sea change for Hilary.
Hollywood is high school for rich people, and Washington is Hollywood for ugly people. As far as the Washington media is concerned, sexiness is a virtue -- the Washington media regards all of the "serious" presidential candidates (like Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson and Barak Obama) are "sexy".
For years and years, it was the Clenis who was the Big Dog. Finally, its Hilary's turn now!

Another Yalie

So who is this Eric Edelman, the undersecretary of defense who accused Hillary Clinton of treason today? Here's his back story. A real prince of a fellow, isn't he?
I think Yale has a lot to answer for.

Great line of the day

Dave at Galloping Beaver notes that Harper won't visit Cuba -- supposedly because of concerns about human rights -- but is OK with visiting Columbia, which actually does have the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere. Dave concludes
:

...when it comes to Steve Harper's neighbourhood, it seems he'd rather buddy-up to the local crack-house than the neighbour with the messy yard.

So, is anybody surprised?

The Globe reports on a new poll which shows that Harper is failing to win country over. Harper is caught between a rock and a hard place -- the more he pushes himself forward as the one and only government spokesperson, the less people like him. Yet he can't let his foot-in-mouth cabinet loose, either.
And now we also hear that the PMO is so hard-up for new ideas they actually had to ask their cabinet ministers for suggestions -- how pathetic is that? Hey, how about a national day-care policy? Or how about holding a meeting in Kelowna to establish a coordinated approach to Aboriginal issues? Or maybe we could develop a plan to meet the Kyoto targets?

Great line of the day

Tbogg makes some interesting observations about Harry Potter-mania:

Aside from those who truly love the books, and obviously millions do, I think this is part of the Big Event nature of our culture, the same thing that causes people who don't watch football to spend the day at a Super Bowl party and pretending to care who wins. We don't have many literary Big Events, since our Big Events seem to be limited to sporting championships and television season or series finales, so we should be happy about the Pottermania. More so, when you consider that the next literary Big Event is probably going to be the release of the Dan Brown's next book.
Oh dear. Kill me now.

They're not "Al Qaeda" anymore, Toto

This Air Force press release about a plane crash in Iraq uses a terminology I don't think I have heard before.
Lately, the preferred US military term for the people they are fighting in Iraq has been to call them all "Al Qaeda", a profoundly misleading term designed to make Americans think that the war is being fought against the 911 hijackers. And media criticism of this transparent tactic has been rachetting upward.
But in this press release, the US air force is now using the term "anti-Iraq forces".
Well, this may be even more inaccurate really, considering that these people are the actual Iraqis while it is the US military itself which could more accurately be described as an "anti-Iraq force".
Be that as it may, however, is "anti-Iraq forces" just another way of trying to switch the focus to Iran? Or does the US Air Force really believe that they are destroying Iraq to save it?