Tom Delay has never been shy about comparing himself to Jesus Christ. In 2001, Delay defended his none-too-subtle campaign to bring his fundamentalism to the United States Congress, "People hate the messenger. That's why they killed Christ." At last weekend's "War on Christians" conference, Delay's American Taliban allies elevated his Christ complex to the level of a crusade.

Vision America founder and conference host Pastor Rick Scarborough led the way in the deification of Delay. Scarborough, whose latest book is titled "Liberalism Kills Kids," attributed Delay's fall from grace not to his corruption and ethics woes, but to his Christian faith:

"I believe the most damaging thing that Tom DeLay has done in his life is take his faith seriously into public office, which made him a target for all those who despise the cause of Christ."

Scarborough continued in his praise of Delay, telling his audience and radical right luminaries such as Alan Keyes, Phyllis Schalfly and Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, "This is a man, I believe, God has appointed...to represent righteousness in government."

Given his two indictments in Texas and repeated admonishments by the House for ethics violations, Tom Delay would be seem an unlikely choice for such divine intervention. He was, after all, a late subtraction from the program of January's Justice Sunday III, the last of the Family Research Council's trilogy of events decrying supposed judicial activism and other imagined offenses against so-called "values voters."

While Tom Delay may compare himself to Jesus, he's clearly on the side of the money changers. Delay counts among his "closest and dearest friends" the twice-convicted felon and Republican lobbyist extraordinaire Jack Abramoff. Only today, former Delay deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy pled guilty to conspiracy charges. He joins former Delay staffer and one-time Abramoff partner in pleading guilty. Delay's former chief of staff, Edwin Buckham, extracted over $1 million from Delay's charity, the U.S. Family Network, a non-profit launched while he was still in Delay's employ. And in 2001, Delay's wife and daughter hauled in over $500,000 from his political action and campaign committees.

Last weekend, Delay was unapologetic and about his long, growing and decidedly un-Christian rap sheet. Delay, who once said, "I don't believe there is a separation of church and state" and proclaimed his mission was to bring "a biblical worldview to government," wowed the friendly crowd at the "War on Christians" event:

"Sides are being chosen, and the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will."

As Delay left the stage of the "War on Christians" event on Sunday, Pastor Scarborough said "God always does his best work after a crucifixion" and urged the Hammer, "Keep your eyes on Jesus."

He would do better to keep his eyes on prosecutor Ronnie Earle and the voters of Texas' 22nd Congressional district.

With the July G8 summit approaching in St. Petersburg, President Bush is facing some uncomfortable questions about his close friend and budding Russian autocrat, Vladimir Putin. Speaking to Freedom House this week, Bush brushed aside suggestions that he boycott the summit, saying the two have a "personal relationship such that there is the possibility for candid conversation" and that "I'm able to walk into the room with the President of Russia and him not throw me out."

That personal relationship was apparently forged in late 2001, when President Bush said of his first meeting with Putin, "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul. I knew that President Putin was a man with whom I could work." Four and a half years later, President Bush this week declared:

"I have worked very hard to convince Vladimir Putin that it's in his interest to adopt Western-style values and universal values -- rule of law, freedom of religion, the right to people to assemble, political parties, free press."

Unfortunately for the American and Russian people alike, George W. Bush may not be the best role model for Vladimir Putin. As Bush himself put it:

"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it." (President George W. Bush, July 26, 2001.)

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." (President-elect George W. Bush, December 18, 2000.)

"You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier." (Texas Governor George W. Bush, July 1998.)

Bush, of course, was joking. But as I've noted previously, the humor of George W. Bush provides a rare window into the dark soul of a man who apparently views his fellow citizens - and the world - with disdain and contempt.

Indeed, far from throwing him out, Vladimir Putin will welcome President Bush with open arms.

That is the central message in a memo from GOP pollster Jan van Lohuizen to RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman. Acknowledging the GOP's current challenges, van Lohuizen says the key to maintaining Republican control of Congress is reenergizing and mobilizing the Party's dispirited base. To do that, the memo claims, the Congressional GOP must stand firm behind a president who enjoys rock-solid support among conservative voters:

The President is seen universally as the face of the Republican Party. We are now brand W. Republicans...President Bush drives our image and will do so until we have real national front-runners for the '08 nomination. Attacking the President is counter productive for all Republicans, not just the candidates launching the attacks. If he drops, we all drop.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, Brand W doesn't have the most positive connotations among consumers (that is, voters). As any marketer will tell you, an important indicator of any company or product is consumers' "unaided brand awareness," that is, whether and what potential buyers already know about it without prompting.

As the Pew Research Center recently reported, consumer awareness of Brand W is high, and the perception is strongly negative. Asked to offer a one-word description of President Bush, the most common response of survey respondents was "incompetent," followed closely by "liar" and "idiot." Positive terms such as "honest," "strong," "good," and "integrity," which dominated the Pew rankings in February 2005, are now found well down the list. It's no wonder President Bush's approval rating registered a moribund 33% in the Pew poll.

As Time Magazine reports this week, Republicans are downtrodden and depressed about their prospects in the '06 midterms. A Time poll shows Democrats enjoying a 9% lead in generic Congressional party preference polls. (Other recent polls show even larger gaps between the parties.) The same poll shows respondents believe the Democrats are better able to address virtually every major policy issue, including terrorism and Iraq.

What is the Democratic response to Ken Mehlman and the Republican National Committee over its planned "Brand W" campaign in 2006? To appropriate another famous brand message, "Just Do It."

This Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the death of Terri Schiavo. While the battle to respect her wishes is thankfully past, the war over individual autonomy and the protection of private, personal life choices is far from over.

As many of the leaders of the religious right convene at VisionAmerica's "War on Christians" conference, Terri Schiavo's parents Mary and Bob Schindler are coincidentally set to release their tell-all book. Meanwhile, husband Michael has broken his public silence, issuing his own book ("Terri: The Truth") and launching a political action committee to take on politicians like the Bushes, Tom Delay and Bill Frist who sought to intervene in his family's private tragedy.

While we can no doubt look forward to a continued struggle over the meaning of the Schiavo tragedy, here is a look back. Reprinted in full below is the text from my March 28, 2005 op-ed in The Oregonian, "Liberty and the Culture of Living."

The mythic image of Barbara Bush as "America's Grandmother" suffered another body blow this week. The Houston Chronicle revealed that Mrs. Bush directed contributions to the Bush-Clinton Katrina relief fund on the condition that the undisclosed funds be spent on products and services from the company of her ne'er do well son Neil.

Of course, Mrs. Bush's cynicism towards and disdain for the victims of Hurricane Katrina is nothing new. Touring refugee evacuation centers in Houston with husband George just days after the inundation of New Orleans, Barbara told NPR's Marketplace program:

"Almost everyone I've talked to says we're going to move to Houston. What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

This week's revelations highlight Mrs. Bush's lesser-known role in paying off family albatross Neil in exchange for his staying out of the limelight. Mrs. Bush is not only a dealmaker for Neil, who was disgraced during the S&L scandals during the late 1980's, but an investor in his company Ignite! Learning as well. She is joined by many of the same friends of Bush who helped establish Neil as a player in Dubai and throughout the Middle East. Her fellow investors in Ignite!, which raised $7.1 million from 53 investors, includes exiled Russian mogul Boris Berezovsky, Hosni Mubarak associate Hamza El Khouli as well as unnamed bagmen in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the British Virgin Islands.

But as Vanity Fair reported back in 1992, Barbara Bush is not only the family dealmaker and puppeteer; she is also its enforcer. During the 1984 vice presidential campaign, America's Grandmother famously described her husband's opponent Geraldine Ferraro, "I can't say it, but it rhymes with rich." When George W. ran for President, she is rumored to have praised her son's Machiavellian campaign, "Son, I love your strategy: don't let them get to know you." In 2004, Bush the Elder reported that his wife was "steamed" by attacks on her son, joking that "if Barbara gets her hands on John Kerry, he might get another Purple Heart." It's no wonder that an admiring Richard Nixon, an expert in such matters, said of Mrs. Bush, "she knows how to hate."

Fear of the wrath of Barbara extends to friends and foes alike. One long-time Bush associate speaking confidentially to Vanity Fair said, "I don't want to be dead...I really like her, but I don't go anywhere near her." A veteran of the 1988 campaign added that "when she frowned it had the capacity to send shudders through a lot of people." Perhaps most telling, an aide during the vice presidency of George H.W. Bush said it wasn't Nancy Reagan she feared. "I always thought Mrs. Bush was the one who would kill you."

The kindly, white haired aristocratic Barbara Bush has also been a staunch if tone-deaf defender of another family vocation - war. "War is not nice," she glibly said. More incredibly, Barbara on March 18, 2003 explained to Diane Sawyer on ABC's "Good Morning America" why she didn't watch television coverage of her son's invasion of Iraq:

"But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that. And watch him suffer."

If Barbara Bush is "America's Grandmother," then we have a serious problem with American family values. Clearly, her dog Millie wasn't the only bitch in the Bush household.

UPDATE: Hat tip to reader "Hugagbug" for the fitting Nixon tribute to Babs.

Neo-conservative founding father Irving Kristol once famously said, a neoconservative is "a liberal who's been mugged by reality." Now the once-preening adherents of the Bush Doctrine are being beaten and battered by events on the ground. First came the Sharia-influenced constitution and sectarian violence in Iraq and the Hamas government in Palestine. With the possible execution of Christian convert Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan, neo-conservatives' faith in democracy promotion in the Middle East is falling victim to their own much-hyped law of unintended consequences.

Consider the Abdul Rahman case. A medical aid worker who converted to Christianity 16 years ago, he survived the rule of the Taliban while helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Now, Rahman has been sentenced to death for apostasy by an Afghan court, a ruling apparently consistent with the new Afghan constitution and its enshrinement of Sharia law.

In January 2004, President Bush proclaimed "Afghanistan has now got a constitution which talks about freedom of religion." Not so much, as he, his followers on the religious right and Abdul Rahman himself are now finding out. Ansarullah Mawlavi Zada, the chief of the three-judge panel in the Rahman case, stated, "we have constitution and law here. Nobody has the right to put pressure on us." Ahmad Fahim Hakim, deputy chairman of the Karzai government's own Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, confirmed that Sharia law recognized by the Afghan constitution mandates that any Muslim who rejects Islam should be sentenced to death. The cleric Khoja Ahmad Sediqi, also a judge on the Afghan Supreme Court, declared, "The Quran is very clear and the words of our prophet are very clear. There can only be one outcome: death."

Rahman may yet escape his constitutionally mandated fate. MSNBC reports that he may be released with in days. Rumors are building that the Afghan government is feverishly looking for an out, including the possibility of having Rahman declared mentally ill. (As Andrea Yates and others have found, in Texas mental illness does not necessarily mean salvation from the gallows.) Or perhaps Rahman may adopt the "Libby Defense," which argues that he was so busy and preoccupied with his duties that he inadvertently converted to Christianity.

But the damage has already been done to the myth of the Bush Doctrine and its central tenet of democracy promotion. President Bush was warned that the new Afghanistan constitution would produce something less like Western liberal democracy and more akin to "Taliban-lite." Now Bush is being backed into a corner by his erstwhile allies, including bloggers Michelle Malkin and LaShawn Barber, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins and other members of the American Taliban. (As Barber ironically reports, the same folks who encourage Christian orthodoxy at home held a "Support Abdul Rahman" rally outside the Afghan embassy Friday to call for religious tolerance in Afghanistan.)

The sad tale of Abdul Rahman is just the latest pronouncement of the death of the Bush Doctrine. Its three central tenets - no safe havens for terrorists, preemption, and democracy promotion - have been swept away by wishful thinking, strategic incoherence and willful neglect. Threats from supposed Axis of Evil states like North Korea and Iran grow and fester. Preemptive war, contingent on unimpeachable intelligence and moral force, was fatally undermined in an Iraq conflict that featured neither. Most strikingly, the fantasy of sowing Western liberal democracy throughout the Islamic world by gunpoint has been abandoned by its most articulate proponent, End of History author Francis Fukuyama.

The neocons have been mugged by reality indeed. We just don't have a new name for them yet.

UPDATE: AP is reporting that the case against Rahman has been dismissed and that he has been released for now due to insufficient evidence and the possibility of mental illness. His trauma may not be over, as he may still be prosecuted or even targeted for death by Afghan clerics. In any event, while Rahman mercifully may live to see another day, the Bush Doctrine remains dead as a doornail.

These may be dark times for President Bush and the GOP, but Republicans are happy. Or at least happier than Democrats. That's the unsurprising conclusion of the annual survey of American happiness ("Are We Happy Yet?") by the Pew Research Center. Just as predictably, conservatives like George Will are happier still about what they see as vindication for their blighted ideology.

On this as on so many other topics, Will has the morality play utterly backwards.

But first a little background. In the Pew survey, 45% of Republicans reported that they were "very happy," compared to only 30% of Democrats. The difference can't be attributed to the conventional wisdom that followers of the GOP are generally better off. Self-proclaimed Republicans were happier than Democrats across all income levels, especially between $30,000 and $50,000. And as depressed and disheartened as Democrats may be about the conservative ascendancy and the Bush presidency (only 9% of Democrats approve of President Bush in the latest Pew research), the "contentment gap" is not a new phenomenon. Democrats' relative joylessness has been confirmed in every Pew poll since the days of Nixon in 1972...

This weekend's third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq brought another shake-up in the Top 10 GOP Sound Bites List.

Catapulting to #4 is the new White House medley, "We're Makin' Progress", performed by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and General George Casey. Still topping the charts is the hard rocking smash hit, George W. Bush's "Terrorist Surveillance Program." Coming in a close second is Scott McClellan's lyrical magic, "Ongoing Investigation." Another cut from that same broken record, Karl Rove's "Pre-9/11 Mindset," is hanging on to #3 in the rankings.

Dropping off the charts was February's number 8 and long-time favorite, "Gathering Threat." And falling from fourth to eighth is the timeless Pat Robertson-Tony Perkins classic, "Culture of Life."

Here is the complete list of the latest Top 10 GOP Sound Bites:

On this the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I'm adding to the endless list of retrospectives. The Perrspectives Iraq Archive includes all of this site's articles, features and pieces on the planning, politics and policies surrounding the American conflict in Iraq. Among the featured pieces:

McCain's toadying started at last weekend's 2006 Southern Republican Leadership Conference. Facing certain defeat in the SRLC straw poll to hometown favorite Bill Frist, McCain asked the delegates to throw their support to President. Bush. He used the venue to offer a full-throated support of President Bush and his Iraq policy, proclaiming "We elected him, we need him, he needs to do well and the country needs him." McCain turned his vitriol towards the President's critics, claiming that anyone who said Bush lied about WMD in Iraq "was lying."

Just days later, McCain continued his pursuit of the Bush team and establishment, announcing Saturday that his Straight Talk America PAC had hired Terry Nelson, the national political director for Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. Nelson, described as the "best bricklayer in the business," will help McCain strategist John Weaver woo the Bush donor network of Pioneers, Rangers and Super-Rangers.

McCain's laser beam focus on the White House apparently enables him to forget the painful memories of character assassination, smears and lies the Bush camp dished out during the 2000 campaign. After McCain's upset win in the New Hampshire primary, Bush operatives during the critical South Carolina contest phoned voters with push polls implying McCain was anti-Catholic, his wife Cindy a drug addict, and that he had fathered an illegitimate black child with a prostitute. (In reality and quite admirably, they'd adopted a baby from an orphanage in Bangladesh) McCain even received an early version of the Swift Boat treatment, with allegations that his Vietnam War captivity in Hanoi left him mentally unstable. All of these slurs came as candidate Bush chastised McCain that he couldn't "take the high horse and then claim the low road." It's no wonder he angrily rejected Bush's feigned attempt in 2000 to bury the hatchet, with McCain telling candidate Bush, "Don't give me that shit. And get your hands off me."

But McCain's presidential ambitions let him forgive these sins in order to rebuild relations with Bush and the Republican establishment. McCain's long road back began during election 2004. McCain not only stumped for George W. Bush, but joined the disgusting chorus of the Swift Boat hacks by stating that "what John Kerry did after the war is very legitimate political discussion." Only the previous month, McCain himself called the attacks on Kerry "dishonest and dishonorable."

John McCain has been playing the game ever since. While McCain butted heads with the White House on his anti-torture amendment, he remained silent as President Bush issued a signing statement in essence announcing his intent to ignore the McCain law as he saw fit. As The New Republic detailed, McCain's Indian Affairs Committee passed up the opportunity to destroy his long time foe and conservative consigliere Grover Norquist (who had called McCain "the nut-job from Arizona") for his role in the Abramoff scandal. And as part of his tune-up for the 2008 Republican primaries, McCain blessed South Dakota's draconian new abortion restrictions (though he noted he would have added exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother).

In October 2004, Saturday Night Live animator Robert Smigel offer "John McCain's Speech," a cartoon that comically depicted McCain's anguish in stumping for Bush after all the slurs he had endured at Bush's hands. As it turns out, the only thing John McCain hates more than George Bush is the thought of not being president himself in 2008.

Update: Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post jumps into the McCain fray ("Maligning McCain") and claims "the left is trying to rough him up a bit." And over at The New Republic, Ryan Lizza offers subscribers his theory that Bush sees McCain as the choice in 2008 to continue his legacy on Iraq.

With its sympathetic portrait of a polygamous family, the new HBO series "Big Love," is helping to heat up the culture war. The show has been the fodder of a Newsweek feature on the polygamy rights movement, complete with headlines such as "Polygamists Unite!" For conservative stalwarts like Charles Krauthammer and Rick Santorum, "Big Love" is ammunition and seeming validation for their claim that same-sex marriage leads directly to legalized polygamy, incest and bestiality.

As usual, the culture warriors have it completely wrong.

In his March 17th column "Pandora and Polygamy," Krauthammer makes the predictably simplistic - and misguided - argument that recognition of marriage for gay couples inevitably entails state sanctioned polygamy.

It is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement -- the number restriction (two and only two) -- is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

This line of argument makes gay activists furious. I can understand why they do not want to be in the same room as polygamists. But I'm not the one who put them there. Their argument does.

No, it doesn't. Same-sex marriage advocates merely argue that the state should recognize the loving relationships that free, autonomous and equal individuals choose to enter into and maintain. And that's where the analogy of gay marriage to polygamy ends.

By definition, polygamy institutionalizes a state of inequality between the spouses engaged in it. Whether involving multiple wives or husbands, the practice enshrines marital disadvantage in family standing, in livelihood, and in, well, consortium. Since the end of the Civil War at least, the United States has not looked kindly on involuntary servitude and has forbid individuals to enter (even freely) contracts that will abridge their freedom and equality in the future. Men and women are not free to be unfree. As John Stuart Mill famously put it, "The principle of freedom cannot require that he should be free not to be free. It is not freedom, to be allowed to alienate his freedom."

In the United States, governments will similarly not condone contractual relationships that may stem from or result in coercion of one or more of the parties, or that may create health risks for the individuals or society at large. That's why the comical pronouncements regarding the slippery slope from same-sex marriage to polygamy, incest and bestiality by United States Senators including Rick Santorum ("man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be") and John Cornyn ("Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife") were so roundly - and rightly - maligned.

So the growing call for same-sex marriage rights will not, should not and logically does not lead to the legalization of polygamy in the United States. But that won't stop conservative culture crusaders from using "Big Love" as a big stick in their war against gay Americans.

The much-deserved indignities continue for President Bush. Just a day after a host of new opinion polls put the President's approval rating as low as 33%, Bush suffered a devastating blow from one of his core constituencies. George W. Bush is losing the cracker vote.

On Thursday, pop star Jessica Simpson snubbed the President, choosing to skip an appearance at a Republican fundraiser featuring Bush. Simpson, who portrayed the Southern belle Daisy Duke in last year's film version of "The Dukes of Hazzard," apparently wanted to avoid the appearance of partisanship in her work for the children's charity, Operation Smile.

Just prior to being stiffed by Simpson, Bush was slammed by country stars and celebrity couple Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. Hill, a Mississippi native, and McGraw, formerly of Dehli, Louisiana, blasted the President for his handling of the hurricane Katrina response. Hill called it "embarrassing" and "humiliating." McGraw minced no words for the man from Midland:

"There's no reason why someone can't go down there -- who's supposed to be the leader of the free world -- and say, 'I'm giving you a job to do and I'm not leaving here until it's done. And you're held accountable.' You know what I can say. Vote."

These defections from the ranks of the Bush faithful would have been unthinkable only months ago. Almost three years ago today, the Dixie Chicks incited a firestorm of criticism for lead singer Natalie Maines' on stage comment in Europe, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." Facing a boycott by outraged fans and indignant radio stations, Maines issued an apology to President Bush.

The news from south of the Mason-Dixon line only gets worse for the President. Outside of Alabama and Mississippi, every southern state now disapproves of Bush's job performance, including rejection in his home state of Texas by a whopping 14% (55% to 41%).

The old times there, apparently, are forgotten.

The latest wave of public opinion polls shows that President Bush's downward spiral continues unabated. The Wall Street Journal reports that Bush's approval rating has plummeted to 37%, with CNN coming in at 36%, a precipitous 10% drop from January. And while a comparatively upbeat Washington Post survey from March 6th put the President at a 41% approval rating, a devastating assessment from the Pew Research Center showed Bush at only 33%, the lowest mark of his presidency.

There can be little doubt that Bush's Iraq quagmire is undermining Americans' support for his presidency. John Harwood in the Republican echo chamber that is the Wall Street Journal reports that Americans overwhelmingly view the Iraq war as having both weakened the United States (50% to 28%) and increased the threat from Iran (44% to 18%). The same WSJ journal survey showed Americans would support a Congressional candidate advocating withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within a year by 50% to 35%. It's no wonder that the same President Bush who scolded the likes of John Murtha for "defeatism" and "surrender" has begun to change his tune.

The latest survey from Pew Research may be the most instructive in documenting the implosion of the Bush presidency. President Bush has seen dramatic declines in support among all voters, especially independents, with his overall approval falling a jaw-dropping 17% in just 14 months. Whereas the most common one-word description of Bush in February 2005 was "honest," today it is "incompetent," with "liar" and "idiot" not far behind. More Americans now view George W. Bush as more out of touch than was Ronald Reagan during the peak of the Iran/Contra scandal in 1987.

Given the poll data, Congressman Cole is clearly right to conclude that this is the winter of the Republicans discontent. Whether Bush's woes translate into springtime for Democrats is another question altogether.

UPDATE: The news from south of the Mason-Dixon line only gets worse for the President. Outside of Alabama and Mississippi, every southern state now disapproves of Bush's job performance, including rejection in his home state of Texas by a whopping 14% (55% to 41%). And in an unsurprisingly under-reported story, Americans (including 29% of Republicans) support Senator Russell Feingold's resolution to censure President Bush.

Refusing to bow to the inevitable, Republican Congresswoman and 2000 GOP recount heroine Katherine Harris is staying in the 2006 Florida Senate race. Sidestepping a major address planned for this evening, Harris instead used the friendly confines of the Fox Hannity and Colmes program to declare her intent to continue her quixotic campaign the Democratic incumbent, Bill Nelson:

"I'm staying. I'm in this race. I'm going to win. I'm going to put everything on the line."

Ms. Harris may put her millions on the line, but the mounting evidence suggests it won't help. Recent polls show her trailing Nelson by as much as 20 points in the polls. And the growing scandal around Harris' illegal contributions from Duke Cunningham bagman Mitchell Wade of defense contractor MZM will ensure her faltering Senate campaign stays under a cloud. It's no wonder the national Republican leadership is running as far away from Harris as possible.

Hopefully, total electoral defeat will be the fitting end for the woman Paul Begala once described as Cruella de Vil "coming to steal the puppies."

A sense of humor has always been an invaluable tool for presidents. Self-deprecating humor helped endear John F. Kennedy to the press and allowed Ronald Reagan to disarm his critics. But for George W. Bush, humor provides only a occasional glimpse of the truth and a rare window into the dark soul of a man who apparently views his fellow citizens with disdain. President Bush's performance Saturday at the Gridiron Club was no exception.

Bush used the roast last night to poke fun at his Vice President. Bush delighted in Cheney's friendly fire quail hunting accident, declaring of Cheney's middle initial (Richard B. Cheney) that "B. stands for bulls eye." The light-hearted Bush also jokingly scolded the press "Good Lord, you'd thought he shot somebody or something."

The President's ribbing of Cheney, the supposed man behind the throne, extended to Bush's own disastrous mishandling of the Dubai ports deal and his calamitous response to Hurricane Katrina. Bush claimed that it is in fact Lynne Cheney who is the woman behind the man behind the man. Bush went on to the punchline:

"Lynne, I think you're doing a heck of a job. Although I have to say you dropped the ball big time on that Dubai deal."

Bush's attempts at comedy might actually be funny if there weren't so, well, tragic. Only in mirth does Bush seem to speak the truth. For example, Bush used the October 2000 Al Smith dinner in New York to shed light on the constituency for his first-term agenda:

"This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base."

Bush's presentation at the 2004 Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner showed his contempt for the truth and the suffering of the American people. His tasteless White House slideshow made light of the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Coming one year and hundreds of American dead and wounded after the invasion of Iraq, President Bush the cut-up hoped to regale the audience with his White House hijinx. As David Corn of The Nation reported:

Bush notes he spends "a lot of time on the phone listening to our European allies." Then we see a photo of him on the phone with a finger in his ear. But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere." The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. "Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here." Laughter again.

President Bush seems almost physiologically incapable of telling the truth. The Bush White House just can't come clean about pre-war intelligence, the NSA spying program, the cost of the Medicare prescription drug plan, his relationships with Ken Lay and Jack Abramoff, global warming, the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the Dubai ports deal or virtually anything else. Only when he's telling a joke does President Bush shed light on reality.

Unfortunately, the joke's on us.

In what may be the latest addition to Jack Abramoff's Republican body count, Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced her resignation today. With Abramoff's legal team threatening to tell all about the "friends of Jack" throughout Congress and the Bush White House, Norton preemptively ended her career in government.

As the Denver Post, ThinkProgress, Atrios and others report, Norton certainly has a lot of explaining to do. Norton protected her deputy and former energy industry lobbyist Steven Griles even after her inspector general described him as an ethical "train wreck waiting to happen." Griles is also currently under investigation for allegations that he aided Jack Abramoff and his tribal casino clients. Norton, too, has been implicated in Abramoff's schemes, including charges that she received $50,000 (and one her aides $500,000) from Abramoff to provide access.

Today's additions to Abramoff's conservative casualty list do not end with Secretary Norton. The New York Times reports that conservative consigliere and anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist took $25,000 from Abramoff's tribal clients to set up White House meetings with President Bush back in 2001. Meanwhile in Georgia, one-time Christian coalition wunderkind and candidate for Lt. Governor Ralph Reed has become radioactive due to his Abramoff misdeeds. At a major GOP fundraiser yesterday, President Bush largely ignored Reed, his 2000 southeastern U.S. campaign chairman.

When it comes to potentially career-ending corruption scandals in Republican Washington, Abramoff isn't the only game in town. Only days after San Diego Congressman Duke Cunningham was sentenced to eight years for accepting $2.4 million in bribes and gifts from defense contractor MZM, Florida's Katherine Harris saw her 2006 Senate campaign begin to unravel thanks to her MZM taint. The web of MZM corruption may ensnare yet more Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Duncan Hunter, John Doolittle, Jerry Lewis, and, of course, Tom Delay.

As for Norton's resignation, it is in the words of the old joke, a good start.

The reaction to the draconian new restrictions on women's reproductive rights in South Dakota tells us a lot about the coming contest for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. Virginia Senator George Allen wholeheartedly endorsed South Dakota's direct challenge to Roe. In his run to the right, John McCain tried to have it both ways. Most predictable, Mitt Romney confirmed the 2005 assessment of his advisor Michael Murphy that "he's been a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly."

Last week, spokesperson Julie Teer laid out Romney's position of the South Dakota abortion ban, "If Gov. Romney were the governor of South Dakota he would sign it. The governor believes that states should have the right to be pro-life if that is the will of the people."

Of course, that's not what Romney has been telling the voters of Massachusetts since 1994. In his failed '94 Senate race against Ted Kennedy, the Mormon and presumptively pro-life Romney declared that abortion should be "safe and legal in this country."

Romney's abortion fraud became essential to his successful 2002 gubernatorial run. Romney, a Mormon who had only recently moved back to Massachusetts from a stint running the Winter Olympics in Utah, defused the issue in the pro-choice Commonwealth by proclaiming "I believe women should have the right to make their own choice." His tack then was to avoid changing the status quo:

"I promised that if elected, I'd call a truce - a moratorium, if you will...I vowed to veto any legislation that sought to change the existing rules...I fully respect and will fully protect a woman's right to choose."

On abortion and reproductive rights, Romney now claims that he has "evolved" and that "my political philosophy is pro-life."

Of course it is. The 2008 Republican presidential primaries are less than two years away.

As predicted yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee today confirmed its status as a rubber stamp for the White House. The Committee, led by staunch Bush ally Pat Roberts (R-KS), rejected vice-chairman Jay Rockefeller's call for an investigation of the President's illegal NSA domestic spying program.

Bowing to pressure from the White House, Majority Leader Frist and its chairman, the Intelligence Committee agreed only to institute a seven-member subcommittee, which along with staff, would receive full briefings on the program. Rockefeller was blunt about the impact of White House arm-twisting, "This committee is basically under control of the White House. It's an unprecedented bout of political pressure from the White House."

The collusion of the panel's supposed moderates Republican members was especially galling. Republican Senator Chuck Hegel yielded to his party, only five week after declaring that President Bush "can't unilaterally decide that that 1978 law is out of date and he will be the guardian of America and he will violate that law." The capitulation of Maine's Olympia Snowe was even more dramatic. Snowe, who supported new defanged oversight legislation declared after the committee vote, "Today we are setting a constitutional marker." That is a complete turnabout from her December call for a joint inquiry by the Intel and Judiciary committees:

"Revelations that the U.S. government has conducted domestic electronic surveillance without express legal authority indeed warrants Congressional examination. I believe the Congress - as a coequal branch of government - must immediately and expeditiously review the use of this practice." (Olympia Snowe, R-ME, 12/21/05)

President Bush got a major boost today in his effort to conduct unchecked and illegal domestic surveillance operations within the United States. And once again, the Republicans in the Senate chose party over patriotism.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is at it again. Just days after threatening to gut the Senate Intelligence Committee if it launches an investigation of President Bush's illegal domestic spying program, Frist announced his new number one legislative priority: the Flag Amendment.

Dr. Frist, whose accomplishments to date include witness malpractice in the Schiavo case and an SEC investigation for insider trading, once again has his eyes focused on the culture war prize of flag desecration:

"I look forward to bringing the Flag Protection Amendment to the floor at the end of June so we can debate legislation that respects one of the principal symbols of our nation, and appropriately honors the sacrifice and commitment of all those who've acted to protect it."

As I wrote last June, if hypocrites like Bill Frist really want to honor and protect the symbols of the United States, they shouldn't be talking about Old Glory, but the Confederate Stars and Bars.

Here, in full, is "Banning True Flag Desecration"...

Tomorrow is shaping as "Showdown Tuesday" for the Senate Intelligence Committee. On Tuesday, the Intelligence Committee led by Kansas Senator Pat Roberts will decide whether to investigate President Bush's illegal NSA domestic wiretapping. At this point, the vote could go either way.

Whether Roberts' committee once again abdicates its oversight role likely comes to down the votes of three Republican members previously critical of the NSA program: Mike DeWine of Ohio, Maine's Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. DeWine, who has both advocated legislation retroactively authorizing the program and sought to avoid a discussion of its constitutionality, will almost assuredly vote against an investigation. The full pressure of Karl Rove and the Bush White House will be focused on Snowe, who previously called for a joint inquiry by the Judiciary and Intelligence committees and Hagel, who on January 29th declared of the President:

"He [Bush] just can't unilaterally decide that that 1978 law is out of date and he will be the guardian of America and he will violate that law."

There should be no doubt where Chairman Pat Roberts and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist stand on the issue. Roberts, who continues to stonewall the promised "Phase II" Intel Committee investigation into the misuses of pre-Iraq war intelligence, authored a letter on February 3rd staunchly supporting the dubious White House legal justification for the program. And just this past Friday, Frist fired a shot across the Democrats' bow, threatening to curb the committee's charter should it proceed with an inquiry into Bush's domestic spying. Far from playing the role of "peacemakers" as described by Byron Wolf of ABC News, Frist and Roberts are trying to stop any oversight of the Bush White House dead in its tracks.

Tuesday's showdown was already delayed once, as a scheduled February 16th vote was pushed back to allow the Bush administration more time to twist arms and perhaps crack some heads. Tomorrow, we'll find out if it worked.

(For the latest news, legal documents, key statutes, timelines and other essential materials, see the Perrspectives NSA Scandal Resource Center.)

Last week, I wrote about the tough times for the Florida's doyenne of electoral deceit, Katherine Harris. Already badly trailing in her Senate race to unseat Democrat Bill Nelson, revelations a week ago showed that Harris accepted $32,000 in illegal campaign contributions from Duke Cunningham sugar daddy, defense contractor MZM.

Now comes the latest chapter in the decline and fall of Katherine Harris. On March 1, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reported that former Harris scheduler Mona Tate Yost left her staff in April 2005 to take a job with MZM. Just three days later on March 4, the Washington Post reported that Harris in 2005 requested $10 million in funding for a Navy intelligence program in her district at the urging of MZM's Mitchell Wade. It was the very same Mitchell Wade who directed the illegal campaign funds to Harris in 2004

Some have compared Katherine Harris to Marilyn Manson or even "Leona Helmsley on Halloween." While reasonable people will disagree, there can be little doubt that she has joined Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Tom Delay and many more in the ranks of the Banana Republicans.