Tom Noe, the Ohio coin dealer who raised tons of money for Bush (and was convicted of breaking the law in that sphere also), has just been sentenced to 18 years in prison for his actions in Coingate.

On Thursday, the White House announced that Bush will resubmit divisive federal appeals court nominations that had been held up by Congress.

Bush renominated William Haynes II, the Defense Department's chief lawyer and author of detainee policies, including policies that justify torture; William Myers III, an Idaho lobbyist for the mining and ranching industries and a critic of environmental regulation; Terrence Boyle, a former aide to Sen. Jesse Helms and district judge in North Carolina who has an abysmal record on civil rights and has had decisions reversed or vacated more than 100 times; and Michael Wallace, a Mississippi lawyer who has opposed enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and is the first federal court of appeals nominee in nearly 25 years to be rated unanimously "not qualified" by the American Bar Association.

So much for the pledge to compromise and de-emphasize partisanship. After the election thumpin', Bush seems more interested in picking fights with the Senate on judicial nominations than in filling vacancies.

[Can you say, "layin' the paper trail for the next round of distortion on the campaign trail"???]

Perhaps this is the time that our official government structure will have to acknowledge the serious problem of record-less electronic voting?

Richard Brooks probably sets a new low for many aspects of columny: insight, narrowness of view, consistency, and, in my mind, basic fairness of analysis.

Here's what Tony Blair said in a speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet:

Another one of those vacuous Presidential Proclamations slipped by me last week.  Now we have an official week for "National Character Counts."

Finally, praise for a piece of ordinary journalism, which managed to identify and explain the built-in contradiction in President Bush's comments about what Vietnam means for Iraq.

I assure you nothing that has happened in the last two weeks will change his [President Bush's] commitment to nominating first-rate talent like John Roberts and Sam Alito.

[Added to Senator Mitch McConnell's assertion that Republican cooperation with Democrats in the next Congress os predicated on giving "the president's judicial nominees an up-or-down vote" in this lame duck congress, this pretty much amounts to a declared strategy of demonizing the Democrats for the next presidential election]

Okay, you're disgusted that federal secrecy seems to be growing faster than the mold on your civil rights.  But how, pray tell, to describe the problem, to quantify the phenomenon so that others may see the problem?

Speaking of health care cons, try this out for size:  more and more Americans are traveling abroad to have expensive surgical procedures done, because the cost is far lower even with the travel costs added in.

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