Sweet....

Universal health care now on the table for the 110th Congress. Of course, this had to be unveiled on the same day that Sen. Johnson (D-SD) suffered a stroke, possibly dashing all hope that it will ever be enacted...

AAAUUUGGHHHH!

We are doomed. Maybe all Congressmen should take regular exams on subjects that come up before their committees. Where have these guys been the last six years? How can they pretend to run an advanced superpower without policy knowledge that even a casual observer of politics would pick up? Seriously?

The Fiction of the Unitary Executive

This is just one of several indications that Bush is going to, at most, draw highly selectively from the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group - my guess is that he will make gestures toward implementing the most vague and indeterminate prescriptions, and then send Tony Snow to explain that Bush has taken the ISG's counsel to heart.

Bush's general untrustworthiness and incompetence is, ironically, an invitation to the media and to the Congress to revisit the ascendancy of the Executive in modern US foreign policymaking. The degree to which this President dominates foreign policy to the exclusion of all other actors is simply not part of our Constitutional system as most would assume. With due regard for the Executive's freedom to direct foreign policy in a coherent and expedient manner, Congress as the body of our elected representatives does have a role to play in determining foreign policy and it is high time that Democrats demand their say.

Richard Cohen Misunderstands Jim Webb

I decide, in violation of common sense and my normal habit, to spend a minute reading Richard Cohen. Immediately I realize why I never read Richard Cohen:

Richard Cohen - How's Your War? - washingtonpost.com

I got the strong sense, reading this column, that Cohen was aware of, but simply did not comprehend, the fact that Webb's son is serving in Iraq right now. And that therefore, Bush's belligerently "caring" question about his son's welfare had a certain, say, visceral quality. Cohen apparently thinks that Webb was just acting up to make a useful, if rude, political point.