It isn't just about parties in this state. It never has been. I think it's about policies and people, and I think the Republican Party has lost sight of that.

Kate Witek, Nebraska State Auditor, in announcing her switch from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party (in which she also said the GOP is more interested in getting its candidates elected, and she feels that Nebraskans want more).

A Federal District Court decided yesterday that the warrantless surveillance program being conducted by this administration through the NSA is unconstitutional.  If you haven't seen the opinion, a PDF copy is here.

Read the following Q&A with the President regarding that court decision and see if you can find even one point bothered to even address whether the program is constitutional, apart from the bare assertion that it is:

You've heard of the piece of chocolate drippings that some workers think resembles the Virgin Mary?  The one that has given at least one employee "renewed faith?" Well exactly where was the chocolate Virgin Mary when this guy needed heavenly chocolate intervention?

You can't tell any more the difference between what's propaganda and what's news.

FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, talking about television stations' use of "video news releases," items prepared by private entities to look like news, and aired by some stations without any disclaimer that the material is not real news.

It didn't take Republicans long to start muddying the waters on the claim that there is a "culture of corruption" in Republican-controlled DC.  They wasted little time jumping on occasional stories of Democratic financial corruption, like the Congressman Jefferson episode.

Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham are probably the new poster boys for the most obvious form of corruption, but it would be a huge mistake to think of the "culture of corruption" as limited to taking money that you shouldn't have taken or giving money that you shouldn't have given.  You certainly can be corrupt without directly and immediately enriching yourself financially.

Raw Story discusses a piece on life as Duke Cunningham's wife.

Consider it episode 1,000 of soap opera "When the mentally and emotionally unstable win the election."

Can you name the other 999 episodes? Tom DeLay is too easy; he doesn't count.

In case you missed it, the Republicans in Indiana's Allen County recently had this little problem of having 11 candidates disqualified because the party's Executive Director, Doug Foy, forged their signatures on the official filing forms.  Boy, what an odd, unexpected, unforeseeable action by the county party's Executive Director.

It isn't officially part of that Republican invention known as the "American Values Agenda," but good old Sam Brownback has introduced legislation that would make it a crime for doctors in Oregon to prescribe federally controlled drugs in order to help a patient commit suicide, even though doctor-assisted suicide is legal in Oregon, and has been upheld by the Supreme Court.
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If companies will lie about employing the severely disabled in order to get preferences for government contracts, why wouldn't they lie about being owned by disabled military veterans?  They would, of course.

In Bushworld, the economy is bright, jobs are plentiful, and the world itself is smelling very rose-like.

In the news, real average weekly earnings dipped again last month and, by my calculations, are down overall for the period from June of 2005 through the end of July, 2006.  And that rose-like aroma seems suspiciously like a cheap aerosol air freshener concealing something just a little more...pungent.

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