Instahoglets 30th April 06

To borrow a bit of fun from J.K. Rowling - try saying "Bush's babbling band of baboons" three times fast.

I was going to write a long post about the Boston Globe article today which reports the hundreds of times Dubya has ridden roughshod over Congress and decided what laws mean after he has signed them. But Glenn Greenwald beat me to it in his usual inimitable style. It is not hyperbole to say that these actions and theories are as antithetical to democracy as can be...the President signs those bills into law -- and then he simply decrees that those laws are irrelevant because he has the power to violate them at will. Thanks Glenn!

Don't forget that the most likely GOP candidate for 2008, McCain, is perhaps even worse. He went on record as saying he would willingly sacrifice the First Amendment for clean government. The righties are up in arms, let me tell you, and rightly so. Still, they must be shortsighted indeed to fail to spot that they've been cheerleading a guy who has been sacrificing the First Amendment AND clean government on the altar of his own Kingship for a term and a half now. WAKE UP, GUYS!

If you're interested, the Washington Monthly has a list of the good guys and the bad guys in the various corruption investigations.

The London Sunday Times has an article from its Economics Editor - one of the best and most trusted in the business - that says the bottom is about to fall out of the dollar. Anyone remember the last time a nation had an elected expansionist garner all political power to himself and you had to take a wheelbarrow of currency with you to pay for a coffee?

U.S. military and security experts are seriously talking about partitioning Iraq as the only way to stop that nation degenerating into a civil war. That way, you get three nations, only two of which hate America and will become terrorist havens. (The other hates Turkey and Iran and is happy to export terrorism there.) The Iraqis, it goes without saying, may not be given a choice by their occupiers. Sovereignty is only good when its the sovereignty to agree with Bush. The Next Hurrah points out the obvious parallel.

Meanwhile, people like Sadr, so long dismissed as irrelevant by the Bush administration and its coterie of neocon Wormtongues, don't agree and make their own plans despite American orders. The militias are stealing recruits from Iraqi police acadamies by offering them better pay and perks. Several hundred a month are just walking out of their jobs without saying a word.

Kevin Drum finally has proof, in the form of a statement by the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, that Bush could have killed Abu Musab Zarqawi in 2002 but refused to order the airstrike. We all wonder why not.

Pakistan has released Mohammed Farooq, one of top proliferator A. Q. Khan's senior scientists, after holding him in detention for two years. The Pakistani government is refusing to let IAEA or American officials talk to Farooq. And we are still expected to believe that Khan was a rogue acting without his governments' complicity and aide. We're also expected to believe that Pakistan's Musharraf is "on our side", despite the evidence.

If you thought the Duke Cunningham corruption scandal had gotten fun and interesting now that there are allegations of hookers servicing high-placed Washington insiders, just wait. Cannonfire points out that, so far, no-one has said exactly what gender the hookers were!
Update In comments, Joseph Cannon says he missed a WSJ mention that the prostitutes were female. However, he also has some more interesting speculation on who was taking photographs at the parties, and why.

Lastly, and just to piss the Malkinites off - Condi Rice says she has no problem with the national anthem sung in Spanish. "From my point of view, people expressing themselves as wanting to be Americans is a good thing." I wonder if Michelle will change her tune now, or whether she will remove her site from the blogroll of Americans For Dr. Rice instead?