The Thursday ‘BushWhack’ing

The weekend is nigh...

• Goodbye to ‘one helluva dame’… Lady Bird Johnson, widow of President Lyndon Johnson, passed away yesterday at the amazing age of 94… I’ll plant something this weekend in your honor
• No funds for you Cheney as AP reports that a Senate appropriations panel, chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), has refused to fund $4.8 million in the vice president’s budget until Cheney’s office complies with parts of an executive order governing its handling of classified information. At issue is the requirement that executive branch offices have to provide data on how much material they classify and declassify, with that information being given to the Information Security Oversight Office at The National Archives. Cheney’s office argues that the offices of the president and vice president are exempt from the order because they are not executive branch ”agencies” and have refused to hand over the documents. (Finally!! Someone showing some balls… don’t relent Mr. Durbin, screw his hide to the wall…)
• This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone; last November, CIA Director Michael Hayden painted an incredibly bleak portrait of Iraq and PM Maliki's government to the Iraq Study Group, whom they’re ignoring, even though “President” Bush had earlier painted a cheery, bright picture…
• A day after Sara Taylor’s pathetic attempt at congressional testimony, Harriet “worse SCOTUS nominee ever” Miers is refusing to appear before the Senate, despite the Senate’s subpoena… let the court-mongering begin!
• An “interim assessment” of Bush’s “surge” argues that the Iraqi government has “made satisfactory progress” toward “nearly half” of the goals set by Congress… (So in other words, the country is still in shambles but the administration doesn’t want to admit that so they’re going to spin it their way and cover their asses… you know, the usual)
• And have we mentioned? That AP obtained a new government threat assessment that “concluded that Al-Qaeda has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since the summer of 2001.” The report goes on to say that the terrorist network “has been able to rebuild despite nearly six years of bombings, war and other tactics aimed at crippling it.” (Nice… way to go George, you’re really going after Al Qaeda hard and fast aren’t ya? Invading Iraq really helped weaken them, didn’t it? It’s too bad we didn’t know where they were hiding and went after them there… oh, wait – we did! It was Afghanistan… remember that country George?? Sigh… let’s see how the administration spins this; I’m sure it will somehow invoke Iraq and the Dems attempts to get us out of there… but I’m just guessing…)