What Heart?
One thing in the story of the Department of Justice's night of the long knives, the eight prosecutors that were removed, and where when questioned for reasons the Administration responded the only way they know how; reflexively by smearing them. By hypocritical gesture
Michael Waldman and Justin Levitt - The Myth Of Voter Fraud - washingtonpost.com to self-serving reasons
Firing of US attorneys puts new focus on voter fraud | csmonitor.com. The thing not to lose sight of is that this did not happen in isolation
Justice Department tugged to the right - Los Angeles Times. Certainly not in isolation from the procedure change worked into the second Patriot act. That allowed for replacement appointments to occur without consultation of congress. A condition without which these replacements would not have been initiated
Time for Answers - New York Times. Nor in isolation from powerpoint presentation to the departments such as occurred at GSA on where and what the agency of government could influence Republican fortunes on the ground
The Blotter Probe Targets GSA Chief. Nor also on the Science Advisory Boards in place throughout the Bureaucracy that as they vaulted over science and empirical process became more politics than policy. This is electoral absolutism, politicizing the U S Government in the era of the Unitary Executive. The Republican parties benefit, On the taxpayers of the Nation's pay. Work towards one party rule, towards a final and eventual despotism. The question is: do they see this, understand this, or not. "Somebody gives me an angle, I play it." This is from the movie Millers Crossing; the rationale Bernie Bernbaum gives to Tom Reagan
Miller's Crossing (1990). I may be inclined to see this as an analogy on the "Just Smart Politics" argument that defenders of Karl Rove's political sensibilities try to advance. Why not play every angle you see? Bernie is blind to the reasons that people want to kill him. Probably even to why Tom Reagan finally does. It's just an angle. Here I'm begging a question that I'm not prepared to really answer. Since I haven't seen this movie now in ten years. Why is Tom good and Bernie bad? Why are we treated to lines like "Jesus Tom Jesus we're not even talking here Jesus" (Mink's line)? Both men are manipulative, and conniving in their nature, and callous of those who care about them. Why is the audience superficially pushed towards accepting Tom as the hero? Seeing Tom as altruistic: "smart play all around." Bernie as selfish: "an angle." Maybe Tom has a code. One that, only maybe, he believes he lives by. We might believe he tries to consider where all the balls will end up, when he plays his angle. While Bernie, more impulsively, just looks at the first angle glowing brightly in front of him. It may be (as has been suggested) simply a matter of who keeps his hat on A metaphor for keeping yourself, your thoughts, your desires, your needs, contained. Under a lid. A roadmap to a masculine ethos. Politics in an open society is a game of aggression. A hard ball game of loyalty, betrayal, revenge, forgiveness. When Tom does shoot Bernie it is when Bernie plays an angle against him. There is no forgiveness. Tom has stepped into a breach for him twice already. Increasing partisan politics brings inevitable waves of increasing reprisal. The temptation to regard this as simply politics in hard times is thrown over by a continual movement to bring changes to the basic rules of the game. Those rules being that politics belongs to the parties and not the government. That a government job is not an enlistment in a parties private army. That the Hatch act precludes such draft. That the organization of our government was intentionally designed to keep faction and party in sublimated realms. There is in the Administration's attempts to justify this behavior
Attorneys for Gonzales Aide Criticize Congressional Democrats - washingtonpost.comincreasingly the sense that they are simply digging themselves in deeper
Dan Froomkin - Blame It on the Democrats - washingtonpost.com. They are pushing through the boundaries of acceptable behavior and demonstrating the inability of the ideological right to tell right from wrong, or to disbelieve anything they do can be wrong . Amply embodied
How Pat Robertson's law school is changing America. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine by the new know-nothings such as Monica Goodling
Scandal puts spotlight on Christian law school - The Boston Globe. Should this be be read as more unconcerned disregard for the balance of the nation - the balance of the electorate. A disrespect for democracy. Or as failure to adjust to reality of shared governance now that the Democrat party have taken precarious control of congress. A position they have never been in since this administration came into office. One they simply may not understand.
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