It’s the incompetency, stupid!

Ruth Marcus details how ideology and patronage systematically trump competence in the Bush White House:

· The president’s amazing-even-for-this-crowd choice to oversee the federal family planning program, Eric Keroack, resigned after Medicaid officials in Massachusetts, where he had a private medical practice, questioned his billings. Keroack’s suitability for the family planning post, in which he was responsible for overseeing the distribution of contraceptives to low-income women? He was director of a group that finds contraception “demeaning to women” and won’t distribute it — even to married women.

· President Bush nominated Michael Baroody, a top official at the National Association of Manufacturers, to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission — the agency charged with protecting consumers against the dangerous products of, yes, manufacturers.

· The Interior Department inspector general reported that Julie MacDonald, the official who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service but who has no academic background in biology, overrode the recommendations of agency scientists about how to protect endangered species. MacDonald also shared internal documents with industry officials and groups that lobby for weakened environmental protections, not to mention an online gaming buddy, the IG found.

· J. Steven Griles, a coal lobbyist who became the No. 2 official at the Interior Department (in other words, his job description didn’t much change), pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his relationship with lobbyist/felon Jack Abramoff. Griles’s then-girlfriend introduced him to Abramoff and ran a lobbying group that received $500,000 in Abramoff-generated funds; in turn, Abramoff sought and received Griles’s help on client matters.

· Griles’s new significant other, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who helped him fend off ethics charges when they both worked at Interior, resigned as head of the Justice Department’s environmental section. Wooldridge and Griles bought a $1 million beach house with the top lobbyist for the oil company ConocoPhillips; then Wooldridge — supposedly with the blessing of ethics officials — signed off on a move to ease up on anti-pollution requirements imposed on ConocoPhillips as part of a settlement.

· Lurita Doan, a GOP mega-donor turned head of the General Services Administration, attended a luncheon on agency premises at which Scott Jennings, a top aide to Karl Rove, briefed political appointees on GOP targets for the 2008 election. According to six people present, Doan asked GSA employees how they could “help ‘our candidates’ in the next elections.” Doan, displaying an Alberto Gonzales-like memory, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week that she had “absolutely” no recollection of that statement.

Who are you, and what have you done with Bob Barr?

Once again, I find myself agreeing with the former Georgia congressman:

(P)erhaps its time to enact a “National Constitution Protection Act,” or “NCPA” for short, patterned after “NEPA,” the National Environmental Policy Act.

Like its environmental counterpart, NCPA would require the government to justify in writing and with sound constitutional logic and precedent, any proposed law or regulation that might adversely impact our civil liberties or any right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The act would require the government to employ steps that would pose the least danger to civil liberties, rather than allow it to get away with as significant a lessening of our rights as it possibly can, which is the current “standard.”

If the federal government — and our state counterparts — were thus forced by law to justify any action threatening our civil liberties, and to consider lesser steps as alternatives, our rights would not be threatened with extinction as they are today. Government actions such as the abuses of the Patriot Act powers, unlawful domestic spying on Americans, enactment of a national identification card database, denial of the fundamental right to possess a firearm with which to protect oneself, the use of secret evidence in federal proceedings, and the taking of one’s property for no reason other than the government wants someone else to have it — all would be priority candidates to be reviewed pursuant to a Constitutional Impact Statement.

Onion du jour

Christ Getting In Shape For Second Coming

HEAVEN—Emerging from a grueling 90 minutes of cardiovascular exercise and light lifting for tone, Son of God Jesus Christ said Monday that He is “definitely on track” to achieve peak fitness condition for the Second Coming. 

Even more historical correctness

In another sign that Japan is pressing ahead in revising its history of World War II, new high school textbooks will no longer acknowledge that the Imperial Army was responsible for a major atrocity in Okinawa, the government has announced.

The Ministry of Education has ordered publishers to delete passages stating that the Imperial Army ordered civilians to commit mass suicide during the Battle of Okinawa, as the island was about to fall to U.S. troops in the final months of the war.

Imagine if U.S. textbooks made no mention of slavery, or Japanese internment camps.

Cheney for president!?!

Believe it or not, The New York Sun is making the case:

Mr. Cheney has virtues as a candidate in his own right. He has foreign policy experience by virtue of having served as defense secretary, and he has economic policy experience, having served as a leading tax-cutter while a member of the House of Representatives. His wife, Lynne, would be an asset to the ticket in her own right, a point made by Kathryn Jean Lopez in a post on the topic at National Review Online back in February. By our rights, Lynne Cheney would make one of the greatest First Ladies in history. Mr. Cheney, in any event, is more than four years younger than Mr. McCain, and, if elected, would be 67 years old at his inauguration, younger than Reagan was when he took office. His health, while a topic of frequent speculation, hasn’t interfered with his service as vice president.

I think at this point a McGovern/Dukakis ticket could beat Cheney.

Hitch on religion: he’s opposed

Here’s some excerpts from devoted contrarian Christopher Hitchens’ latest book, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”:

* On God: ” ‘God is in the details?’ He isn’t in ours, unless his yokel creationist fans wish to take credit for his clumsiness, failure and incompetence.”

* On the Koran: “I simply laugh when I read the Koran, with its endless prohibitions on sex and its corrupt promise of infinite debauchery in the life to come.”

* On Islam: “A mask for a very deep and probably justifiable insecurity . . . not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance.”

* On creationism and intelligent design: “The inculcation of compulsory stupidity.”

* On Gandhi: “A fakir and guru” whose belief in primitive farm-based living meant that “millions of people would have starved to death if his advice had been followed.”

* On Billy Graham: “His absurd [post-9/11] sermon made the claim that all the dead were now in paradise and would not return to us even if they could.”

* On the Dalai Lama: “A hereditary king appointed by heaven itself. How convenient!”

* On Moses: “Commandingly authoritarian and bloody-minded” and given to “genocidal incitements.”

Keeping tabs with the alien spawn

Suri Cruise is not even 1 year old, but the young diva has a hair appointment every single week, says an insider. “She is always naked and no one’s allowed to talk around the baby,” laughs the snitch.

Sweet home

SYLVANIA, Ala. (AP) – A woman who went for a horseback ride through town at midnight and allegedly used the horse to ram a police car was charged with driving under the influence and drug offenses, police said Tuesday.

Even more PC madness from Europe

The European Union is advising government spokesmen to refrain from using words like “jihad,” “Islamic,” or “fundamentalist.” Because, you know, there’s no such thing as jihad or an Islamic fundamentalist.

Brussels officials have confirmed the existence of a classified handbook which offers “non-offensive” phrases to use when announcing anti-terrorist operations or dealing with terrorist attacks. …

One alternative, suggested publicly last year, is for the term “Islamic terrorism” to be replaced by “terrorists who abusively invoke Islam”.

How about “politicians who abusively invoke political correctness?”

It’s the incompetency, stupid!

Ruth Marcus details how ideology and patronage systematically trump competence in the Bush White House:

· The president’s amazing-even-for-this-crowd choice to oversee the federal family planning program, Eric Keroack, resigned after Medicaid officials in Massachusetts, where he had a private medical practice, questioned his billings. Keroack’s suitability for the family planning post, in which he was responsible for overseeing the distribution of contraceptives to low-income women? He was director of a group that finds contraception “demeaning to women” and won’t distribute it — even to married women.

· President Bush nominated Michael Baroody, a top official at the National Association of Manufacturers, to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission — the agency charged with protecting consumers against the dangerous products of, yes, manufacturers.

· The Interior Department inspector general reported that Julie MacDonald, the official who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service but who has no academic background in biology, overrode the recommendations of agency scientists about how to protect endangered species. MacDonald also shared internal documents with industry officials and groups that lobby for weakened environmental protections, not to mention an online gaming buddy, the IG found.

· J. Steven Griles, a coal lobbyist who became the No. 2 official at the Interior Department (in other words, his job description didn’t much change), pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his relationship with lobbyist/felon Jack Abramoff. Griles’s then-girlfriend introduced him to Abramoff and ran a lobbying group that received $500,000 in Abramoff-generated funds; in turn, Abramoff sought and received Griles’s help on client matters.

· Griles’s new significant other, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who helped him fend off ethics charges when they both worked at Interior, resigned as head of the Justice Department’s environmental section. Wooldridge and Griles bought a $1 million beach house with the top lobbyist for the oil company ConocoPhillips; then Wooldridge — supposedly with the blessing of ethics officials — signed off on a move to ease up on anti-pollution requirements imposed on ConocoPhillips as part of a settlement.

· Lurita Doan, a GOP mega-donor turned head of the General Services Administration, attended a luncheon on agency premises at which Scott Jennings, a top aide to Karl Rove, briefed political appointees on GOP targets for the 2008 election. According to six people present, Doan asked GSA employees how they could “help ‘our candidates’ in the next elections.” Doan, displaying an Alberto Gonzales-like memory, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week that she had “absolutely” no recollection of that statement.

Onion du jour

Christ Getting In Shape For Second Coming

HEAVEN—Emerging from a grueling 90 minutes of cardiovascular exercise and light lifting for tone, Son of God Jesus Christ said Monday that He is "definitely on track" to achieve peak fitness condition for the Second Coming. 

Even more historical correctness

In another sign that Japan is pressing ahead in revising its history of World War II, new high school textbooks will no longer acknowledge that the Imperial Army was responsible for a major atrocity in Okinawa, the government has announced.

The Ministry of Education has ordered publishers to delete passages stating that the Imperial Army ordered civilians to commit mass suicide during the Battle of Okinawa, as the island was about to fall to U.S. troops in the final months of the war.

Imagine if U.S. textbooks made no mention of slavery, or Japanese internment camps.

Cheney for president!?!

Believe it or not, The New York Sun is making the case:

Mr. Cheney has virtues as a candidate in his own right. He has foreign policy experience by virtue of having served as defense secretary, and he has economic policy experience, having served as a leading tax-cutter while a member of the House of Representatives. His wife, Lynne, would be an asset to the ticket in her own right, a point made by Kathryn Jean Lopez in a post on the topic at National Review Online back in February. By our rights, Lynne Cheney would make one of the greatest First Ladies in history. Mr. Cheney, in any event, is more than four years younger than Mr. McCain, and, if elected, would be 67 years old at his inauguration, younger than Reagan was when he took office. His health, while a topic of frequent speculation, hasn’t interfered with his service as vice president.

I think at this point a McGovern/Dukakis ticket could beat Cheney.

Hitch on religion: he’s opposed

Here’s some excerpts from devoted contrarian Christopher Hitchens’ latest book, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything":

* On God: " ‘God is in the details?’ He isn’t in ours, unless his yokel creationist fans wish to take credit for his clumsiness, failure and incompetence."

* On the Koran: "I simply laugh when I read the Koran, with its endless prohibitions on sex and its corrupt promise of infinite debauchery in the life to come."

* On Islam: "A mask for a very deep and probably justifiable insecurity . . . not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance."

* On creationism and intelligent design: "The inculcation of compulsory stupidity."

* On Gandhi: "A fakir and guru" whose belief in primitive farm-based living meant that "millions of people would have starved to death if his advice had been followed."

* On Billy Graham: "His absurd [post-9/11] sermon made the claim that all the dead were now in paradise and would not return to us even if they could."

* On the Dalai Lama: "A hereditary king appointed by heaven itself. How convenient!"

* On Moses: "Commandingly authoritarian and bloody-minded" and given to "genocidal incitements."

Keeping tabs with the alien spawn

Suri Cruise is not even 1 year old, but the young diva has a hair appointment every single week, says an insider. "She is always naked and no one’s allowed to talk around the baby," laughs the snitch.