there's an old saying that goes something like "The greatest trick of the devil would be to convince humanity that science has all the answers."

Well, in this case I think the greatest trick of the devil is to convince people that everything that gets revealed about this administration is just some partisan mudslinging. You seem to believe this or formulate in your head...based on what I don't really know...that everyone who comes out and says something bad about anyone in the Bush administration has an axe to grind. Not for nothing but that's about the equivalent of thinking space aliens killed JFK...meaning you are taking the same leap that I guess you are accusing the rest of us of taking when we pay attention to a story in the paper or a source that comes forward to say something in Georgie's big ol' cowboy hat just ain't right.

Bottom line is here, Pat, the Bush administration is taking on credibility problems like the Titanic took on water. Now you have the top man for Bush (Rove) and Cheney's Chief of Staff (Libby)...the same two guys that Bush and friends immediately jumped up and said "It wasn't them!" when the story broke...implicated in outing this CIA agent. The Republican party and Rove's student Ken Mehlman can dance around this and play semantic games with it all they like...a fact is a fact and shit still stinks like shit. The fact is Rove and Libby discussed a CIA operative by name (saying "Wilson's wife" is the same as saying Valerie Plame or Valerie Wilson) with the intention of smearing and discrediting Joe Wilson because he told the truth about the Niger-Iraq nonsense and our very own president stood before the nation and lied about it...again with the purpose of  fooling the general public into supporting a war with Iraq. Sorry Pat but that's what happened and if you feel no outrage about that just because Bush is supposedly a Republican, supposedly a Christian, and supposedly is for putting an end to abortion...well then that would mean you are truly lost.

Now the big argument from the right wing nutjobs is not that Rove and Libby didn't do it...hell, they all know they did it and why...the big argument from them is was it illegal. Well, fuck me! What happened to their moral compass on this one? Their family values? Their tough talk about the War on Terror? 

I guess they don't see the fact that it was immoral to put Valerie Plame and any of her fellow operatives or contacts in jeopardy  for simple political purposes (to lie about Wilson to cover a lie they told earlier), that this also compromises the security of our entire nation (including the children, Pat, oh the children...aren't they supposed to be the ones that stand up for the children? even those not yet born?)...Jesus, her field was WMD's sort of a big issue in the world today.

Where are their family values in supporting burning the Wilson family for telling the truth?

Where's their tough talk on "Terror" when they want to pussy foot around two top administration officials casually giving out classified information to reporters? They should all be screaming for Libby and Rove to be publicly executed for Christ's sake...they put WMD contacts and operatives at risk at a time when this nation is at war with terrorists who may have access to this technology.

Why is Bush himself now changing his tune about Rove and Libby, going from saying "anyone that was involved with leaking information to reporters would be fired" to saying "anyone found guilty of a crime would be fired."?

You realize that's the equivalent of saying "Hey, if they can get away with it its fine with me!"...well ain't that gutless and disgusting.

People (including Republicans) are talking about the fact that Rove (and likely now Libby too) should resign because their presence is now detrimental to the Bush administration and the Republican party. Well, the fact is the whole damn administration is detrimental to the Republican party...Bush pretending to be deaf, dumb, and blind to this whole situation (until they can prove it's a crime) is outrageous. If I was a Republican or someone that voted for Bush I can't imagine how much shame I'd be feeling right now. This is truly pathetic.

Yeah, I was happy to read about Libby, I admit that. Is it so wrong to want to see guys that are guilty all of what I stated above get what's coming to them? I mean that really benefits us all. Don't you see that? It's not a partisan issue in the least, Pat. The facts are against the Bush administration and they just keep coming. You bought into the  nonsense that Richard Clark, Paul O'Neill, Karen Kwaitowski, Ray McGovern, and all the others just had an axe to grind or a book to sell...well, over the course of time the evidence has piled up and continues to pile up that supports all that they have said. What evidence did these right wing nutjobs and the Bush toadies offer to discredit what these people said...NOTHING...they just claimed "Oh they have an axe to grind or a book to sell."

It supports a general pattern in the way that they operate...they don't deny what they did but they play stupid until someone can convict them of a crime...which they know may take years...especially when they can mobilize the troops to scream and shout that anyone calling for an investigation is just playing partisan politics.

Look at the simple facts, Pat.

When Wilson's article ran in the New York Times the Bush administration was forced to admit that, yes, the info in the president's speech involving Iraq buying yellowcake from Niger was in fact false and should not have been in the speech.

 Then they did some outrageous dance about the info being in there because they had been told to remove it, Tenet discredited it and warned it needed to come out, they then supposedly did remove it and shipped it back over to the CIA for approval. The CIA then signed off on it once the Niger-Iraq thing had been taken out. 

Then a strange thing happened, the Niger-Iraq lines were put back into the speech. Now, this was the State of the Union address...a major speech...one that gets reviewed, read, reread, and practiced probably 1000 times or more before the president actually stands before the nation and presents it. So how did those lines get back into the speech after it had been presented to the CIA twice and they had been removed? Well, in a very pathetic attempt to lay the blame somewhere they tried to say some flunky speechwriter accidentally threw those lines back in.

The fact that that's as likely as everybody on the Baerwald board hitting the lottery on the same day seems not to have occured to a lot of people. The content of that speech was checked and rechecked so many times that it had long been out of the hands of the speech writers whose only job is to make it read well...they don't add or cut content.

So here we have a bold faced lie being presented in the State of  the Union address, Wilson writing his article in the Times about the lie being in there, the administration admitting the lie should not have been in the speech, then another outrageous lie about how it got in there, and then a digusting campaign to discredit Wilson (the guy who told the truth) run at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Do you see why this Joe Wilson story is so important? Why the Bushco clowns want to do whatever they can to shoot it down?

At the heart of the story is the fact that Bush and his whole administration got caught telling a whopper of a lie to the world in the State of the Union Address, a lie they have never explained, that was there with with the sole specific purpose of selling the public and the Congress a war with Iraq.

This is why the Republicans are flailing about on it. Dancing around like a three legged cat trying to bury shit on a frozen pond. This is why they despise Joe Wilson and want him smeared...because he proved they were bullshitting us into a war and they had to admit it. He caught them red handed and they were forced to admit there was a giant lie right in the middle of the SOTU address. A lie they don't want to explain...a lie they wish would go away...a lie that only the President, VP, and top level staff could have put there...a lie that is a violation of our Constitution and should end up in impeachment proceedings.

Now they have Rove and Libby as players in this mess and these two men are one step removed from the president and vice president. Don't you see, Pat, this is the Titanic heading for the iceberg and you're on board rearranging the deck chairs.

Another newsflash: Bush doesn't care about stacking the Supreme Court with judges that will overturn Roe vs Wade...anybody who thinks that's his goal is not paying attention. There is no profit from stacking the Supreme Court with hillbilly judges that may be interested in doing that. Abortion is just there to help win elections to these people. Banning abortion would take it off the plate at election time...it profits them more to have abortions legal and keeping those abortions clinics full. About 70% of this country favors keeping abortions legal. Of course that 30% that wants to do away with it are loud and are more likely to be Christians that will turn out to vote due to the issue. Bush wants to stack the court with judges likely to rule in favor of the interests of big business...that's profitable. The abortion thing is nonsense, it's just a tool to them.