C-SPAN is getting better and better with the Democrats putting the investigations front and center. I have to say it’s thrilling to watch Republicans squirm after years of this bullshit going the other way.

Kucinich, bless him, is even going after Dick Cheney with articles of impeachment. I am a big fan of this approach, because I have always maintained that we’re gonna need to get Cheney out of the way before we impeach the President.

But honestly, we need to impeach people for the right reasons, otherwise we’re no better than Kenneth Starr. Let’s not make it a witch-hunt and address the issues head on. We have a lot to choose from, so let’s make it the right choice, OK?

And let’s make it a real issue so the GOP candidates duking it out for the privilege of being the loser in ’08 have to comment about it on national television.

Speak Into The Lamp, Mr. Attorney General

What’s funny about the whole Gonzales-attorney firings scandal is that the firings themselves weren’t illegal, especially not after the Bush administration pushed through that law which specifically cleared such actions. It’s kind of like Whitewater all over again—a shady deal with no underlying illegality.

Democrats are applying a mob-busting technique in their investigative approach. Move the fridge and the roaches will scatter.

As always, the cover-up is worse than the crime. Gonzales probably lied to Congress. But let’s say he didn’t. Let’s say these Bush administration guys, like Gonzales and Scooter Libby and the rest of that bunch aren’t lying when they pull the memory defense.

It seems, from the available evidence, that all this politically motivated nonsense is just standard operating procedure in the White House. These guys are screwing people on their shit list all day—you think they remember who they talked about screwing at 3:15 on a particular Tuesday afternoon? Of course not! They screwed sixteen other people that day.

Republicans may protest that I’m not being fair, that I’m not giving the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt. Well, I have a proposal I think will be mutually agreeable: we need to have the GAO bug the White House. Every staff member’s office, phone, and computer should be monitored. I mean, you know the Democrats are going to keep launching these investigations—wouldn’t it be nice to have full documentation at your fingertips to avoid embarrassing gaffes?

Now, I hear what you’re saying—if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. Others may be wondering, this bugging operation sounds expensive. Why doesn’t Congress get off its ass and just torture the answers out of them? Sorry, but torture has been legally restricted to matters of national security… oh, wait.

The Lyric is “Barbara Ann,” Jackass

Do any of the people running for President understand what war with Iran actually entails? Both Democrats and Republicans have basically threatened to go to war with the Islamic Republic, from Hilary and Obama’s “no option is off the table” to McCain’s “Bomb Iran” bit at the VFW.

Let’s start with McCain’s sentiment. If our plans involve trying to disarm Iran’s nuclear capacity, we should look at the history of this sort of thing and learn from it, because Iran has.

Jonathan Pollard is serving a lifetime sentence for passing (among other things) information on Iraq’s nuclear weapons program to Israel, which took this information and bombed Osirak, Iraq’s nuclear reactor facility in 1981, ultimately putting a nuclear weapon permanently out of Saddam’s reach.

Since then, Iran started building their nuclear facilities deep underground, so as to avoid such crippling air strikes. Essentially, you have to use “bunker buster” nuclear warhead to get at these installations—and the Iranians have built dozens of dummy facilities to fool satellite reconnaissance.

Did you understand what I just said? Attacking Iran means nuclear war. Now, is there a candidate from either party who has enough guts to take a stand against global thermonuclear war? I can really only think of Kucinich, who is just crazy enough to impeach Dick Cheney as discussed above, so he’ll never get that all-important moderate wing of the Democratic party on his side.

That’s just the bombing part—Iran is four times the size of Iraq and has more than two-and-a-half as many people. But there’s also another big problem: Iran controls Hezbollah, the world’s best rained and financed terrorist gourp, who have largely stayed away from the U.S.—if Iran gives Hezbollah the go ahead, we’ll have a different kind of world war on our hands. And to top it all off, it will prove to the world that we don’t hate Arabs, we hate all Muslims, be they Arab, Afghan or Persian.

Going to war with Iran, whom we have already immeasurably strengthened by taking out Saddam and impoverishing their traditional rival Iraq, means starting World War III, unless you consider the Cold War “World War III.”

It’s funny, as I started typing this, the Antibalas song “World War IV” started playing on my Rhythmbox. Were the lyrics prophetic for 2000, or is it just that shit never changes?

This tune is called World War IV.Everyone’s wondering, what happened to World War III? …The war makers of this world are so crafty that they can have World Wars without people realizing they’re even going on, people can just sort of disappear. Everything happens silently.

…We have all these war criminals going around. There’s a big war criminal in the United States named Bill Clinton. And Madeleine Albright, right, who’ve been trying to starve people to death in Iraq, and Cuba, and North Vietnam.

So that’s World War IV, it’s the president of Mexico trying to starve all the different groups of Mayas in Chiapas to death…

It’s the New York City Police officers’ war against black people who come out of their houses with their wallets in their hands.

It always unnerves me when American politicians pretend to care about Iraqi civilians, especially those who voted to endorse the genocidal sanctions which killed 1.5 million people.

Free Speech and McCain Feingold

I think, based on the partial birth abortion ban decision, that the Supreme Court will overturn McCain-Feingold on free speech grounds. Personally, I have never thought the act went far enough in addressing the problem of legalized corruption, and now that the Democrats are going to have to come up with a replacement, I humbly offer the following:

All media purchasing by the candidate is banned, other than a website, dramatically driving down costs. Any advertising will be bought by completely separate 527-style groups which will be unregulated except for the following: a) No communication or financial support can be shared with the campaign or campaign workers, and b)The SEC awards a $100,000 fine to anyone who can provide proof of libel in political advertising against a named candidate or party, to be paid by the offending 527. That way all the candidate is legally allowed to focus on is grassroots organizing and their message.

Simple and constitutional, no?