Rant #1

It would be hard to describe my disappointment in the current Republican Congress. The essence of it can be summed up by my reaction to their reaction to the New York Times illegal disclosure (I think it was treasonous, but at the very least it was illegal) of the SWIFT transaction monitoring program.

I thought "Well the Justice Department will give them a pass, given the weak response to the NSA Surveillance program disclosure. At least the House and Senate can slap them with a resolution."

How wrong I turned out to be. When they finally got around to noticing that the Times had done something (about a week after the disclosure), each house drafted its own weak-knee, gutless, response. Kind of a "well, now, that wasn't very nice! And you know who you are!" response. They didn't even have the guts to name the Times (New York and LA) as the naughty ones! What kind of nutcakes do we have as Congressional (non)leaders?

There was far more indignation over the FBI raid (legal in every respect and handled quite diplomatically if you ask me) of Jefferson's office. That burst their little narcissistic bubble and they got quite testy -- even the Republican leadership. Let the New York Times publish war secrets during a war and it takes an act of congress (pun intended) to get them to make a half-hearted effort.

Then Hamdan comes along. Mark Steyn was exactly right on that one:

The same kind of inspired jurisprudence conjuring trick that detected in the emanations of the penumbra how the Framers of the U..S Constitution cannily anticipated a need for partial-birth abortion and gay marriage has now effectively found a right to jihad -- or, if you're a female suicide bomber about to board an Israeli bus, a woman's right to Jews.

I thought I would puke when I heard Senator Graham commenting on the Senate's actions in the wake of Hamdan. They were going to craft a bill the United States could be "proud of." What the hell is he prattling about? We are proud of our armed forces! We are proud of our police and firemen. We are proud of the brave civilians who are helping to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. There is nothing that could emenate from the Senate chambers that could make me proud. They very best they can do is act in a way that my disgust at them is only moderate!

Hugh Hewitt says the next six months will be better than the last six months. I hope he is right! Things are bad when I start reacting the same way to Bill Frist as I do to Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi. I'm not alone in this opinion.