Roving band of idiots

This administration's cognitive deficiencies are crystal clear, and Karl Rove's statements this week demonstrate the extent of neoconservatives' inability to reason.

The only intelligent defense for us is to understand our enemies. Even Robert McNamara said so in last year's documentary, "The Fog of War." Moderation, restraint, preparation for war, actual war, and an understanding of our enemies must all coexist for us to persevere in this war on "terra." Democrats, many of whom have served in the military that their neoconservative chicken hawk colleagues have not, know this, a meta-concept that apparently flummoxes Rove et al.

Partisanship in this country has birthed the very caricature of what we might label "binary thinking." One side is 100 percent correct, and the other side is 100 percent wrong. Common denominators are for sissies. A real man ignores anyone who disagrees with his ideas, which, after all, come not from his own mind but from God's.

Dogma never had it so good.

Thank you, guitar gods

Have I ever told you how much you mean to me?

Freedom doesn't come free

This is what we hear, but I'm beginning to wonder whether it's prosperity for the few that indeed comes free for the wealthy at the expense of the many who pay with their lives for unjust wars.

"You're Beautiful"

It's a song by Gordon Lightfoot. He's singing to a woman he loves. He's telling her how beautiful she is. He feels blessed that such a beautiful woman loves him.

Say what you will about Gordon Lightfoot. He's a genius, and "You're Beautiful" is my favorite love song. Beautiful women who have entered and exited my life have heard me sing this song, but tonight I sing "You're Beautiful" to the beautiful woman in my mind. This woman is listening, and I imagine that one blessed day she will fall in love with me.

Are you a Dr. Pepper?

Some of you know I have a penchant for Mr. Daniels' elixir. Yes, that would be Mr. Jack Daniels.

Typically, I mix it with some Coca Cola in a rocks glass filled with ice. This evening, Dr. Pepper has taken Coca Cola's place, and the Doctor's doing a pretty good job of it.

It's heresy, you say? What're ya gonna do, huh? Stop me?

I didn't think so.

Tony Blankley is a hypocrite

Here's a guy who's editorial page editor for The Washington Times. He's a blowhard on "The McLaughlin Group," a show that surely does Jon Stewart proud (not). And he's a sycophant with a curricula vitae that includes a seven-year stint as press secretary for former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich.

Blankley's only redeeming moment, come to think of it, was when he wrote for George Magazine, the late John F. Kennedy Jr.'s pride and joy. It's a publication that no longer exists, which leaves Blankley bereft of his one respectable professional accomplishment.

Blankley, in case you haven't figured it out, is a right-wing henchman. On "Hardball With Chris Matthews" this evening, Blankley decried the era of gotcha journalism that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein heralded in early 1970s Washington, D.C.

The role of the press in the Watergate scandal, according to Blankley, held President Richard Nixon to a standard higher than those that previous presidents observed and withstood. In this way, acording to Blankley, Nixon was selectively indicted by a media that looked the other way just 10 years earlier when left-wing heroes such as JFK crossed the line. If we are to believe Blankley, crossing the line of ethics has been a commonplace presidential practice stretching back to the infancy of the republic.

Maybe so, but Blankley took advantage of the gotcha climate he despises when he decided to join a right-wing jihad against President Bill Clinton. An entrenched ethos, investigative journalism as defined by the Watergate scandal may not be all the good things its proponents contend, but surely its legacy has been more beneficial than the political hypocrite's.

Deeply flawed arguments

True to form, reaction to the identity of Deep Throat has split cleanly along partisan lines that reach all the way back to the Vietnam War and the coldest days of the Cold War. Last night's edition of CNN's "Paula Zahn NOW" was a case-in-point.

Zahn's guests were President Richard Nixon's former special counsel, Leonard Garment; G. Gordon Liddy; and Howard Kurtz, a media critic for The Washington Post. As expected, Kurtz carried the liberals' torch while Liddy and Garment took turns launching right-wing volleys at the news. Among his many statements, Garment had this to say:

But let me just add this. In my view, in my humble view, the -- Richard Nixon's downfall was inevitable from the time the burglars were caught and a grand jury was impaneled and Earl Silbert and the U.S. attorney's office went to work on that case. Virtually everything that was ever known about Watergate was revealed in the deliberations of the grand jury, witnesses called by the -- produced by the FBI and called by Earl Silbert, so, that the course of history, I think, would not have been changed one bit.

Garment's assertion holds merit. Legal proceedings alone may have unearthed every single nook and cranny of Nixon Presidency wrongdoing imaginable. Garment still misses the point.

Think of impeachment as war without all the cool bombs and stuff. Not only an important check on our government, impeachment is politics, by design, practiced at the most extreme level possible this side of armed conflict.

The Fourth Estate, more than mere window dressing, is frequently the only available ingredient to precipitate political pressure, something both impeachment and war demand. President Bill Clinton faced impeachment at the hand of no less than a jihad whose fuel was right-wing media. Without the "insurrection," putatively liberal, that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein waged outside of and parallel to the legal course of events, Watergate's crimes may never have met their just punishments.