Ezra Klein describes -- perfectly -- what is happening to the Republicans. Specifically, during their current retreat.
We should be able to take it for granted that our legislators won’t petulantly crash the economy or offend rape survivors. That the House GOP leadership had to mount an organized campaign to convince GOP members of those things is evidence that something has gone wrong in the Republican Party.No one knows that better than Republicans themselves. But it’s very difficult to be a Republican in a time of GOP dissolution. And so recent weeks have birthed the strangest strain of commentary I can remember: The Republican Party’s crazy opinions are President Obama’s fault.
The logic here is weirdly impeccable. The Republican Party’s dilemma is that House Republicans keeps taking all kinds of unreasonable and unpopular positions. If Obama weren’t president, the House Republicans wouldn’t be taking so many unreasonable and unpopular positions. ...Klein, WaPo
They are purely nuts, trying to blame their ills on the President. They're using him as a kind of psychological shield against understanding and coming to terms with their own problems.
Bush's Attorney General, John Ashcroft, in line with the rest of that administration, had a habit of searching for excuses and cover-ups, none more blatant and funny than his 2002 tussle with a statue in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice.
America's puritanical attorney-general, John Ashcroft, has had the half-naked statue of the Spirit of Justice covered because he was annoyed at being photographed in front of the exposed right breast.
Curtains costing £5,500 will now shield the aluminium art deco work - nicknamed "Minnie Lou" - and its companion, the Majesty of Justice, a male figure naked apart from a loincloth. ...Daily Telegraph
A woman named Claire Braz-Valentine wrote an open letter to the Attorney General. Here's the beginning:
John, John, John, you've got your priorities all wrong. While men fly airplanes into skyscrapers, dive bomb the pentagon, while they stick explosives into their shoes, and then book a seat right next to us, while they hide knives in their luggage, steal kids on school buses, take little girls from their beds at night, drive trucks into our state capital buildings, while our president calls dangerous men all over the world evildoers and devils, while we live in the threat of biological warfare, nuclear destruction, annihilation, you are out buying yardage to save Americans from the appalling alarming, abominable aluminum alloy of evil, that terrible ten foot tin tittie. You might not be able to find Bin Laden, but you sure as hell found the hooter in the hall of justice. ...megalink.net
