Discussing "accountability" for education results in New Orleans yesterday, President Bush reiterated one of his favorite sound bites, "It's what I call challenging the soft bigotry of low expectations." Alas, not when it comes to the President himself and certainly not when the subject is progress in Iraq.

A plea to extend the soft bigotry of low expectations to the President is exactly what the Bush White House requested today in response to the devastating assessment of Iraq progress detailed in a draft GAO report. White House spokesperson Dana Perino crystallized the need to grade Bush on a steep a curve, claiming "A bar was set so high, that it was almost not to be able to be met." Press Secretary Tony Snow also insisted that the pass/fail standard, which no doubt served Bush so well while an undergraduate at Yale, should not apply to the 18 Congressionally-mandated metrics for Iraq:

"If you're trying to do an overall judgment on what's going on in Iraq, the idea that somehow your standard is everything completed, or nothing completed seems to me to be a pretty high standard to meet. On the other hand, if you're trying to figure out, are you making progress toward the goals that you have set out, that's probably the proper way to look at it."

That approach to moving the goalposts resulted in President Bush's comically rosy July interim surge report that even some of his most reliable supporters found laughable. Coming just two weeks before General Petraeus' Iraq surge progress report, the draft analysis from the Government Accountability Office paints a much darker picture of the situation in Iraq. On July 12 in his interim surge status report, President Bush trumpeted "we're making progress" based on checking off 8 out of 18 Congressionally-mandated milestones. In contrast, the GAO analysis concluded that only three of the benchmarks had been reached. (For more details and a comparison chart between the two assessments, visit here.)

But when the report card is this bad, the President's handlers protest, Bush deserves extra credit points. Both Snow ("Well, look, it's no secret that many of the benchmarks have not been met") and Perino ("I think we have said they have not met the benchmarks") acknowledged the shortcomings of the Iraqi government and the surge. But Bush, they argue, should get credit for positive developments in Al Anbar province unrelated to his surge plan. As Snow attempted to explain, "among the benchmarks are not the fact that Sunni Iraqis have, in fact, turned against al Qaeda."

Sadly for the administration, the reality on the ground in Iraq is not kind. Which is why the Pentagon is already hard at work to revamp (read: doctor) some of the GAO's conclusions. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morell admitted as much, explaining, "We have provided the GAO with information which we believe will lead them to conclude that a few of the benchmark grades should be upgraded from 'not met' to 'met.'"

At the end of the day, the situation in Iraq is grim by any objective measure. But then again, objectives measures are what President Bush uses to judge minorities and the poor here in the United States. They don't apply to him when it comes to Iraq.

That's what low expectations are for.

As ThinkProgress reported today, Fox News attacked CBS rival and single mother Katie Couric for her upcoming trip to Iraq. But while Neil Cavuto, John Gibson and the gang at Fox grew hysterical about Couric, they remained silent about 26 year old Michelle Ring and other single mothers fighting for the United States in Iraq.

The issue for Fox, of course, is that anyone else's coverage of Iraq inevitably brings the facts of Bush's Baghdad fiasco directly to American television screens. But in a new low even for Fox, Couric (whose husband passed away from colon cancer in 1998) was accused of placing her children at risk all in the name of ratings. As guest Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for American put it:

"She's saying my ratings are more important than my children. That's the bottom line."

If only Fox News would focus such concern on all of the American single mothers who are fighting - and dying - for us in Iraq. That would include women like Michelle Ring of the 92nd Military Police Battalion based in Fort Benning, Georgia. Ring, who joined the Army in 2005, recently reenlisted with the hope of becoming a military police officer. Ring was killed by mortar fire on July 5th while on guard duty.

At her July 16th funeral service in Portland, Oregon, Ring was praised by Lt. Col. Leonard Cosby from her unit, who declared "The soldiers of the battalion I represent are better for having known your daughter." Master Sgt. Ronald Barnes added "She was never afraid to get her hands dirty and get the task done, no matter what it was."

Ring is just one of many American single mother soldiers among the 76 servicewomen killed in Iraq. Lori Piestewa, killed in the Iraq war's opening days, left behind children ages 3 and 4. (Ring's sons are 5 and 7.) But far from limiting their duty or receiving special protection (as Tucker Carlson suggested), Lory Manning of the Women in the Military Project says women in the military just want to serve their country:

"We should be protecting the men from being killed, too. Men and women are soldiers. And we have never, ever tried to protect women more than men."

Say what you will about Katie Couric and her motives in going to Iraq. But the key is that she is going to Iraq. After all, Americans should expect nothing less than that their highest-profile journalists would cover the biggest story of our age.

Which is precisely the problem for Fox News, whose Republican partisan politics result in half the Iraq war coverage of MSNBC and CNN. But then again, no one ever accused them of being journalists.

Back in July, President Bush in his interim Iraq surge status report claimed progress that even some of his most fervent supporters viewed as pure fantasy. Now, just two weeks before General David Petraeus delivers his White House authored report to Congress, a new analysis from the GAO confirms the assessments of Bush's July delusion.

The draft report from the Government Accountability Office paints a much darker picture of the situation in Iraq. On July 12, President Bush again trumpeted "we're making progress" based on checking off 8 out of 18 Congressionally-mandated milestones. In contrast, the GAO analysis concluded that only three of the benchmarks had been reached.

The differences between the reports are striking, especially regarding the Bush administration's controversial - and unsupported - claims that violence and attacks against Iraqis have been reduced. As the Washington Post notes:

"While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved."

"Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies."

The draft GAO report is just the latest blow to the manufactured rosy scenarios on Iraq flowing from the White House. After President Bush declared "cause for optimism" in his interim report, the New York Times cataloged examples of the White House giving itself passing marks in areas showing little or no progress, including passing an oil law, revising the CPA's de-Baathification order and more. Earlier this week, Americans learned that the hastily released Iraq National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was "softened" by General Petraeus himself in advance of his September 11 testimony to Congress. And that Petraeus presentation, of course, will feature the not-so-invisible hand of the White House. As ThinkProgress detailed this morning, it's no surprise that the White House is feverishly working to "water down" the final version of the GAO report.

The GAO study is just the latest case of President Bush being "mugged by reality", as neoconservatives are so famously fond of saying. But while the American people overwhelmingly recognize the facts on the ground in Iraq, President Bush will never acknowledge them. As Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars just last week, "a free Iraq" is within reach.

UPDATE: The AP is reporting more details on the White House and Pentagon efforts to dramatically alter the conclusions of the final GAO report before its public release. Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell confirmed that "We have provided the GAO with information which we believe will lead them to conclude that a few of the benchmark grades should be upgraded from 'not met' to 'met.'"

With the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Americans can expect an onslaught of grim retrospectives and even gloomier forecasts for the Gulf Coast. Stories recalling the destruction of New Orleans, the calamitous response of the Bush White House, rampant corruption in the storm's wake and the proposals of the 2008 presidential candidates will flood the web, the airwaves and the printed page.

Perrspectives, too, is here to offer its look back on the Katrina disaster and the death of New Orleans with four pieces from 2005. First, Perrspectives looked at the budget trade-offs and funding cutbacks that imperiled New Orleans vulnerable levee system. Next, a quick comparison to election year 2004 in Florida showed the Bush administration can indeed handle hurricane management, if only in battleground states governed by the President's brother. Then, Perrspectives examined the Republican plans to convert the decimated Gulf Coast into a laboratory for every rejected right-wing policy nostrum from school vouchers to no "prevailing wage" payments, all while enabling the unbridled cronyism that defines the Bush presidency. Last, I reflected on the missing ingredient in President Bush's Katrina PR disaster - the Lisa Beamer of New Orleans.

"New Orleans Pays the Death Tax" (8/31/05)
After a storm in 1995 killed six people, major work was needed to improve the levee system. In response, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA), which alotted 10 years and $430 million to the Army Corps of Engineers to build new pumping stations and repairing the levee system.

The warning signs were clear: think of it as the equivalent of President Bush receiving a presidential daily brief titled, "Category 5 Hurricane Determined to Strike in U.S." And yet in 2003, the SELA funds slowed to a trickle. The Army Corps' funding in New Orleans was slashed to due to the twin constraints of the Iraq war and the budget deficit. By Febuary 2004, President Bush proposed cutting SELA spending by 80%...(more)

"FEMA: Florida Election Management Agency" (9/5/05)
Mel Brooks once said, "it's good to be king." Well when it comes to hurricanes, it's even better being the President's brother. Especially in a vital swing state. In an election year.

Louisiana's Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco is learning that the hard way. While her state suffered through a disastrous, disorganized and delayed response to Katrina from FEMA and the Bush administration, Florida governor Jeb Bush had no such problems as his state weathered four hurricanes in 2004...(more)

"Where's the Lisa Beamer of New Orleans?" (9/8/05)
The Bush White House, if nothing else, is a marketing machine, a triumph of style over substance. In the summer of 2002, Bush Chief of Staff Andy Card admitted as much, declaring the time for selling the planned war with Iraq was not yet ripe, "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

Therein lies the problem for President Bush in the marketing of his administration's abysmal response to hurricane Katrina. Bush has no product. Even worse, he has no pitch man, or worse still, pitch woman. In a nutshell, George W. Bush needs the Lisa Beamer of New Orleans. But unlike 9/11, in New Orleans, the color of suffering - and heroism - is black. And while his father at least tried to speak fondly of "the little brown ones", President Bush can't even muster that...(more)

"Trojan Horse: The Bush Plan for Katrina" (9/19/05)
Last Thursday's speech by President Bush in New Orleans' Jackson Square kicked off the administration's cynical campaign to snatch political victory from the jaws of defeat in the wake of its disastrous Katrina response. Karl Rove's strategy for the coming 2006 mid-term elections will modeled on his 2002 GOP success with the Department of Homeland Security. With the Gulf States devastated, hundreds dead and thousands displaced, President Bush and the GOP will lace a popular recovery program featuring massive federal spending with a laundry list of conservative initiatives damned by the left and previously rejected by the American people. Putting politics before the people of the Gulf Coast, President Bush will then dare the Democrats to block them...(more)

As the old expression goes, you are what you eat. And that imagery, apparently, is behind the growing conservative chorus calling for the resignation of disgraced Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig.

Revelations that Craig pleaded guilty to charges of "lewd conduct" in a Minnesota airport men's room is producing right-wing revulsion absent during the recent prostitution woes of Louisiana's David Vitter. With more potential revelations rumored to be coming from his home state Idaho papers, Craig's near-term survival (let alone 2008 reelection prospects) seems in great jeopardy. Conservative radio host, columnist and blogger Hugh Hewitt rejected the Senator's almost comic explanation and declared "Craig's behavior is so reckless and repulsive that an immediate exit is required." By Monday night, some right-wing Idaho bloggers (here and here) were already calling for Craig to step down.

The pressure from his GOP colleagues is also starting to build. Craig quickly resigned his post as the Senate leader for Mitt Romney's presidential effort, followed immediately by the Romney team scrubbing an adoring video by Craig from the campaign web site. And as FireDogLake and Down with Tyranny report, the groundswell to feed craig to the wolves is well underway in the conservative corner.

The contrast with the David Vitter affair could not be more stark. The family values Louisiana Senator and Clinton inquisitor emerged largely unscathed from his prostitution scandal involving his rumored predilection for women in diapers and threats from his own wife of a Lorena Bobbitt redux. As the record shows, Hugh Hewitt was not along among the mouthpieces of the right when he said of Craig, "I realize that I did not say this about Senator Vitter." Vitter's colleagues clearly felt the same way:

Bob Livingston, whose affairs led to his own moral implosion and eventual replacement in Congress by Vitter, said his fellow. Louisiana Republican should "pick himself up and charge forward." Arizona Senator John Kyl also rushed to the defense of the serial whoremonger Vitter, "I don't know what it is that he has apologized for, and until it's clear that there's some kind of crime that was committed, that was of such a nature that he should resign, it seems to me that talk is a little premature." And fellow Cajun conservative Bobby Jindal, the frontrunner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, had apparently joined Vitter in seeking divine intervention.

What's behind the right's different response to Craig's boy trouble? In a nutshell, the boys. When it's raining men, Republicans will rain criticism on their own. The philandering and serial marriages of Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson apparently fit within the big tent of Republican family values. But introduce the specter of homosexual behavior by the likes of Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, Jim West and Ed Shrock, and the conservative movement acts quickly to throw the sinner overboard.

At this point, the script will write itself. After his initial denials, Senator Larry Craig will issue the obligatory Republican "unpology" to anyone he "may have offended or disappointed." But it won't be enough. If he does not resign his seat outright, Craig will abandon his 2008 reelection campaign.

As so it is with the right. The punishment of ex-communication is certain when one of the faithful gets caught speaking of the love that dare speak its name.

UPDATE: ThinkProgress and Town Hall provide the latest updates on the Craig revulsion-fest now underway in right-wing ciricles. Particularly notable is the cognitive dissonance of GOP presidential hopeful and Kansas Senator Sam Brownback.

Here, then, are the greatest hits of Alberto Gonzales:

"Mr. Comey's testimony related to a highly classified program which the president confirmed to the American people sometime ago."
Alberto Gonzales, on revelations by Comey on March 2004 confrontation with Gonzales at John Ashcroft's bedside regarding illegal NSA domestic surveillance, June 5, 2007.

There has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed."
Alberto Gonzales, February 6, 2006.

"I intend to spend the next year and a half in a sprint to the finish line."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, facing imminent no-confidence vote, June 1, 2007.

"Being able to go and having a very candid conversation and telling the president: 'Mr. President, this cannot be done. You can't do this,' - I think you want that."
Alberto Gonzales, May 19, 2007.

"No."
Alberto Gonzales, asked to share an example of a time he told President Bush "you can't do this," May 19, 2007.

"I wouldn't characterize those as top aides."
Alberto Gonzales, regarding chief-of-staff Kyle Sampson and White House liaison Monica Goodling, May 15, 2007.

"At the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names."
Alberto Gonzales, following the resignation of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, May 15, 2007.

"The one person I would care about would be the views of the deputy attorney general, because the deputy attorney general is the direct supervisor of the United States attorneys."
Alberto Gonzales, following the resignation of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, May 15, 2007.

"Looking back, things that I would have done differently? I think I would have had the deputy attorney general more involved, directly involved."
Alberto Gonzales, testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee, April 19, 2007.

"[Y]ou're asking me a question I hadn't really thought about."
Alberto Gonzales, asked if any U.S. citizens were being denied their habeas corpus rights, May 10, 2007.

"There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution."
Alberto Gonzales, January 19, 2007.

"I think I may be aware of that."
Alberto Gonzales, May 10, 2007.

"My feelings and recollections about this matter have not changed."
Alberto Gonzales, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on his purge of U.S. prosecutors, May 10, 2007.

"The moment I believe I can no longer be effective, I will resign."
Alberto Gonzales, April 19, 2007.

"I now understand that there was a conversation between myself and the president."
Alberto Gonzales, April 19, 2007.

"Senator, that I don't recall remembering."
Alberto Gonzales, April 19, 2007.

"I recall making the decision. I don't recall when the decision was made."
Alberto Gonzales, April 19, 2007.

"I don't recall being involved in deliberations involving the question of whether or not a U.S. attorney should or should not be asked to resign."
Alberto Gonzales, March 30, 2007.

"I'm not going to resign. I'm going to stay focused on protecting our kids."
Alberto Gonzales, March 22, 2007.

"People have to believe in what we say."
Alberto Gonzales, March 9, 2007.

"I hope that this episode ultimately will be recognized for what it is: an overblown personnel matter."
Alberto Gonzales, March 7, 2007.

"I would never ever make a change in a United States attorney position for political reasons or that in any way would jeopardize an ongoing investigation."
Alberto Gonzales, January 18, 2007.

"I think that the American people lose if I spend all my time worrying about congressional requests for information, if I spend all my time responding to subpoenas."
Alberto Gonzales, March 3, 2007.

"Obviously I'm not going to say that I am perfect and that I've been perfect in doing my job."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, November 30, 2006.

"President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance of the enemy on a far broader scale."
Alberto Gonzales, February 6, 2006.

"I told one person in the White House...I told the chief of staff."
Attorney General (and then White House counsel) Alberto Gonzales, describing his next steps after being notified by Patrick Fitzgerald about CIA leak investigation, July 24, 2005.

"I work for the White House, you work for the White House."
Alberto Gonzales, in a speech to U.S. attorney John McKay and all other 92 U.S. attorneys, early 2005.

"In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions..."
White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, memo on Geneva Convention and Taliban/Al Qaeda prisoners, January 25, 2002.

For more on the Alberto Gonzales' legacy of criminal and ethical wrongdoing, see "Gonzo But Not Forgotten: The Crimes of Alberto Gonzales."

The rumors emanating out of Washington DC suggest that President Bush's politicization of the DOJ through the installation of his own praetorian guard will continue. On the second anniversary of his role in the Katrina disaster, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff is said to top the list of potential Bush replacements. And as ThinkProgress is reporting, Bush loyalist and domestic security neophyte Clay Johnson III may be tapped to replace Chertoff.

Congress must continue its investigations. Alberto Gonzales may be gone, but his crimes are not forgotten. As Winston Churchill famously said:

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Here, then, is a look back at the Top 10 Reasons Gonzales Had to Go:

When it comes to health care, Hillary Clinton of all the presidential candidates faces a special burden. As her rivals left and right unveil their health care plans, Senator Clinton is moving cautiously, as if seeking a vaccine to protect her from a recurrence of her 1990's experience. Call it Hillary's Inoculation Strategy: go slow, go small, and go with your enemies.

No doubt, Hillary Clinton faces a daunting challenge over health care in the 2008 race. Her leadership of the failed Clinton health care initiative in 1993/94 has made her a lightning rod in both parties. Fair or not, "HillaryCare" became the signature issue behind the conservative "big government" caricature that helped fuel her staggeringly high disapproval numbers. It's with good reason Hillary Clinton is quick to acknowledge the "scars" of those 1990's battles.

Which is where the inoculation strategy comes in. While supporting the goal of universal coverage, Hillary Clinton seems to be taking great care not to get out front and to not go it alone.

The first ingredient is to create the veil of bipartisanship. Taking a cue from Michael Corleone, Hillary Clinton in 2004 began to keep her friends close and her enemies closer. Focusing on less controversial and seemingly non-partisan issues such as standardized medical records and expanded patient access to information, Hillary in August 2004 co-authored a milquetoast op-ed with then Senate Majority Leader, Doctor Bill Frist. Proclaiming an "emerging bi-partisan consensus" for "major, transformative change," Clinton and Frist discussed incremental reforms at the margins, primarily to spur market competition in a consumer-driven health care system.

A much more high-profile Clinton dalliance with former foes featured Newt Gingrich in May 2005. Their joint appearances featured a common technocratic approach to a small sphere of health care issues, again centering on medical technology, records and information sharing. Their Odd Couple act not only helped defuse some of the right-wing rage over the ambitious Bill Clinton health care plan Gingrich helped stonewall, but even earned Hillary some conservative cred on national defense. As the New York Times noted:

"I know it's a bit of an odd-fellow, or odd-woman, mix," she said. "But the speaker and I have been talking about health care and national security now for several years, and I find that he and I have a lot in common in the way we see the problem."

For his part, Mr. Gingrich, who helped lead the impeachment fight against President Bill Clinton, called Mrs. Clinton "very practical" and "very smart and very hard working," adding, "I have been very struck working with her."

"Unlike most members of the legislature, she has been in the White House," he said. "She's been consistently solid on the need to do the right thing on national defense."

While Mitt Romney may view Hillary Clinton as the reincarnation of Karl Marx, she clearly believes her efforts may yet pay dividends among others in his Republican Party.

The second pillar of Hillary's campaign prescription for health care is the resurrection of the micro-program. A hallmark of her husband's presidency, micro-programs are tightly-focused, small budget initiatives intended by design to be cumulative - and unobjectionable. Put another way, these projects are popular because they don't cost a lot of money and merely listing them seems to represent progress.

Senator Clinton's incrementalism is reflected in the proposals offered in her two health care addresses to date. In May, she articulated a series of steps to help cut costs, while comments she delivered in New Hampshire on Friday emphasized improving the quality of American health care. Compared to the $2 trillion the U.S. spends on health care (16% of GDP in 2005), Hillary's initiatives are small potatoes indeed. As CBS detailed, Clinton offered a laundry list of small fixes for everything from physician reimbursements and nursing improvements to expanded patient involvement in health care treatment plans:

To improve quality, Clinton said she would promote physician certification programs that help doctors keep up with the latest advancements, increasing Medicare reimbursements for doctors who participate in them. Nursing care would get a boost in the form of $300 million to expand enrollment in nursing schools, create mentoring programs for recent graduates and recruit more minorities into the profession.

The third and last facet of Hillary's inoculation strategy on health is to proceed slowly and with all deliberate speed. While her Democratic rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards revealed much more ambitious plans centered on employer mandates and a subsidized national insurance pool (Obama) and universal coverage through mandatory insurance (Edwards) all funded by reversing the top tier of the Bush tax cuts, Clinton to date has held her fire.

Promising a major address on universal health care coverage in September, Senator Clinton describes her seeming caution as just part of her grand plan.

"My order here is deliberate. In order to forge a consensus on universal health care, we need to assure people that they will get the quality they expect at a cost they can afford."

Clinton's time-release formula for health care may be deliberate, but it may also be a convenient guise for testing the political winds. While her opponents in both parties get buffeted, Hillary Clinton apparently is biding her time for calmer conditions.

On Friday, Senator Clinton in essence laid bare her inoculation strategy, declaring "I hope we're getting to a point where the quality of our health care is not a partisan issue."

With their rehash of tax breaks and free-market insurance schemes, her Republican opponents like Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani couldn't disagree more. Meanwhile, the choice for Clinton and her Democratic opponents seems to be this: concede to the conventional wisdom politics of the possible or risk all on a universal care program that could propel a candidate to the White House and perhaps the Democrats to an enduring majority. While she has yet to divulge her promised universal coverage plan, Hillary Clinton thus far seems unwilling to place that bet.

It's certainly understandable that Hillary Clinton feels once bitten, twice shy when it comes to the health care issue. But to get to the White House, she has no alternative but to offer her own prescription and, like all the candidates, take her medicine.

These are just some of the developments this week that made me barking mad:

President Bush was against Iraq-Vietnam analogies before he was for them. Like his would-be heir Rudolph Giuliani, Bush gets the lessons completely wrong. But whether it's World War II, the Korean War or Vietnam, the President is only too happy to waterboard history for political purposes.

The White House Office of Administration claimed it was subject to the Freedom of Information Act before the DOJ claimed it was not. And while the Bush White House has no intention of delivering any documents by any Congressional deadline anyway, Dick Cheney continues to insist he's not part of the executive branch.

Karl Rove, by the way, believes that after the current Oval Office occupant departs, the Bush Doctrine will live on. Too bad it's already dead.

Former CIA Director George Tenet rejected the conclusions of a declassified inspector general's report that he was to blame for the deaths of 3,000 Americans on 9/11. Meanwhile, current Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell blamed us all for discussing illegal NSA domestic surveillance and his subsequent prediction that "some Americans are going to die" as a result.

Mitt Romney showed once again why even a close aide described him as a "pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly." The former pro-choice Massachusetts candidate turned pro-life GOP White House hopeful was for a constitutional amendment banning abortion only two weeks ago. Now he wants to leave it up to the states.

Speaking of Mitt, fellow dog abuser Michael Vick's guilty plea ended any hopes of a Romney-Vick '08 ticket. His playing days might be over, but as a convicted felon and animal torturer, Vick can still enjoy a successful career as a conservative pundit.

Meanwhile, the plummeting Consumer Comfort Index and average incomes still below 2000 levels show Americans are still suffering from a Bush league economy.

In Washington this week, the White House renewed George W. Bush's war against children's health care that dates back to his days as Governor of Texas. Just two weeks after the House and Senate each approved major expansions of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), the Bush administration announced draconian new eligibility rules that would trim thousands of low income children from the rolls. But unlike his Texas two-step when he claimed credit for a program he fought tooth and nail, this time George W. Bush isn't running for anything.

As the New York Times described, the White House quietly dispatched a letter at 7:30 PM on Friday evening outlining its new curbs on S-CHIP eligibility. With Congress out of session, Dennis Smith of the federal Center for Medicaid and State Operations notified states that they must reach 95% enrollment of families below 200% of the poverty level before they can expand their programs. Of course, no state currently approach the 95% figure today (nationally, almost 30% of eligible children remain unenrolled in S-CHIP). Worse still, several states previously received the federal government's OK to extend their coverage to even higher income levels and more are considering further expansion still:

In New York, which covers children up to 250 percent of the poverty level, the Legislature has passed a bill that would raise the limit to 400 percent - $82,600 for a family of four - but the change is subject to federal approval.

California wants to increase its income limit to 300 percent of the poverty level, from 250 percent. Pennsylvania recently raised its limit to 300 percent, from 200 percent. New Jersey has had a limit of 350 percent for more than five years.

It's no wonder incredulous state health care officials are horrified by the Bush administration's new regulations. Ann Clemency Kohler, deputy commissioner of human services in New Jersey, said "It will cause havoc with our program and could jeopardize coverage for thousands of children."

If this all sounds vaguely familiar, it should. As I wrote last month ("S-CHIP on Bush's Shoulder"), the unfolding saga over children's health insurance is a repeat of then-Governor George W. Bush's performance in Texas. There, Bush first opposed the S-CHIP program and then tried to limit its scope with restrictive income eligibility requirements. Facing certain defeat over the popular program, Governor Bush ultimately caved to public pressure. Of course, he then took credit for it.

As The New Republic noted, we've been here before. In the 1990's, then Texas Governor George W. Bush opposed a bi-partisan effort to expand S-CHIP in his state. Despite Texas' worst-in-the-nation status (then and now) in the percentage of residents without insurance, Bush (then as now) opposed the broadened program on both fiscal and philosophical grounds. As Salon reported in July 2000, Bush tried to limit eligibility to families with incomes at 133% of the poverty line, compared to the 200% standard adopted in most states (and over Bush's opposition, in Texas). Bush's hard line would have kept 200,000 kids off the program's rolls. As it was, the difficult and cumbersome application process limited sign-ups to only 28,000 of the 500,000 children eligible by mid-2000.

None of which stopped George W. Bush taking credit for the program during his 2000 presidential campaign. As Joshua Micah Marshall reported in Salon:

In Bush's press release it says: "When the CHIPs program was first implemented, Governor Bush embraced it as an opportunity to help deliver health coverage to thousands of uninsured children, and signed legislation providing health insurance for more than 423,000 children."

On July 20, 2000, Al Gore made a trip to San Antonio, Texas. Gore described Governor Bush's opposition to the program and the onerous eligibility process he set up to blunt participation by Texas families. "As a result," Gore said, "there are 600,000 children in Texas eligible for health insurance who don't have it." Sadly, Bush never paid a price for stonewalling on S-CHIP and his war against Texas' children.

Fast forward to 2007 and it's deja vu all over again but with one important difference: this time, George W. Bush isn't running for anything. All of which raises the question: Will Bush once again yield to public pressure on S-CHIP expansion and then take credit for it?

The emerging dynamic of the 2008 campaign suggests not. Unlike 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush is not on the ballot and so does not need a children's health care program or Medicare prescription drug coverage to boost his chance. More importantly, the clear GOP strategy for 2008 calls for obstructionism at all costs. That is, through Senate filibusters and presidential vetoes, Republicans aim to prevent Democrats from claiming credit for virtually anything and thus position Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi as failed leaders of a do-nothing Congress.

That contest remains to be played out. But in the mean time, President Bush is ensuring that the real losers will be America's children. Just like he did in Texas.

(For more on the Bush modus operandi on health care of opposing needed and popular health care programs but then claiming ownership of them after they pass despite his efforts, see ("S-CHIP on Bush's Shoulder.")

But Bush's desperate act of revisionist history only served to confirm two basic truths. First, President Bush fundamentally does not understand - or willfully misrepresents - the lessons of the Vietnam War. And second, that makes Rudy Giuliani his natural successor.

As usual, Bush's speech was replete with an array of historical analogies, almost all of them comically inapt. For example, Iraq is like Japan, where the United States helped "the Japanese turn defeat into democracy." The President also resurrected his Iraq as South Korea canard, where American persistence and ongoing military commitment "helped raise up an Asian Tiger that is a model for developing countries across the world, including the Middle East." Inconvenient truths, such as then fact that the U.S. occupied a totally defeated enemy in Japan, defended South Korea from invasion by Pyongyang and Beijing, and in neither case faced civil war and sectarian conflict, were no barrier to Bush's butchery of the textbooks.

But it was on Vietnam that President Bush showed his commitment to losing the last war again before losing this one:

"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields.'"

If the President's misuse of the lessons of Vietnam sounds familiar, it should. After all, just last week 2008 Republican White House frontrunner Rudy Giuliani said virtually the same thing.

Like the man he hopes to succeed, the former New York mayor looks to the Vietnam War and invents an analogy to today's quagmire in Iraq. Sadly, the parallel isn't that the U.S. mistakenly fought the wrong war as a misguided part of a larger global struggle, or that Americans found themselves hopelessly bogged down in someone else's battle for national self-determination that the U.S. could not hope to "win". Instead, Giuliani argues in the pages of Foreign Affairs, the U.S. gave up too soon, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory:

"America must remember one of the lessons of the Vietnam War. Then, as now, we fought a war with the wrong strategy for several years. And then, as now, we corrected course and began to show real progress. Many historians today believe that by about 1972 we and our South Vietnamese partners had succeeded in defeating the Vietcong insurgency and in setting South Vietnam on a path to political self-sufficiency. But America then withdrew its support, allowing the communist North to conquer the South...The consequences of abandoning Iraq would be worse."

President Bush, of course, is wrong that "three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left." (How Bush got into and left the Texas Air National Guard is another question altogether.) But as their blinkered misappropriations of the Vietnam legacy to justify the quagmire in Iraq show, Bush's departure from the Oval Office can't come soon enough, while Giuliani's arrival there must never happen at all.

With former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani in his crosshairs, 2008 GOP White House hopeful Mitt Romney has begun running radio ads focusing on illegal immigration. Attacking sanctuary cities like Rudy's New York, Romney hopes to galvanize the fired-up anti-immigrant Republican base against Giuliani. As it turns out, Romney himself provided aid and comfort for illegal alien workers at his posh Belmont, Massachusetts estate.

The new Romney spots try to paint Giuliani as weak on illegal immigration during his time as New York mayor. After a voice-over intones "Immigration laws don't work if they're ignored," Romney chimes in:

"Legal immigration is great. But illegal immigration, that we've got to end. And amnesty is not the way to do it."

But as the Boston Globe reported last December, Romney hired a landscaping firm that routinely utilized illegal alien workers to tend to his 2-1/2 acre family residence just outside of Boston. The firm also tended to the grounds of his one of his five sons, Taggart. The Globe team interviewed four undocumented workers in Guatemala who confirmed that Romney never asked for them or their employer to produce immigration papers.

Confronted by Globe reporters, Romney offered a Romneyesque response:

Asked by a reporter yesterday about his use of Community Lawn Service with a Heart, Romney, who was hosting the Republican Governors Association conference in Miami, said, "Aw, geez," and walked away.

While the Romney camp blasts Giuliani over his 1994 statements ("If you come here and you work hard and you happen to be in an undocumented status, you're one of the people who we want in this city"), Rudy's supporters like Rep. Peter King (R-NY) accuse Romney of turning a blind eye on his own sanctuary cities while Governor of Massachusetts.

Having flip-flopped on abortion, stem cell research, government investments in Iran and even his own state of residence, Mitt Romney might want to stop beating himself up over illegal immigration.

With his plea deal yesterday on charges of running a dog fighting operation, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick likely brought his NFL career to an end. But Vick's next calling awaits him as soon as he is released from prison. Michael Vick, it would seem, is supremely qualified to be a conservative pundit.

Far from a barrier, a felony conviction is often a feather in the cap for the aspiring right-wing radio host, Fox News commentator or conservative movement mouthpiece. After all, Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy enjoys a fine livelihood as a talk radio host and author, while Iran/Contra hatchet man Oliver North is a regular on Fox News. (His street cred was no doubt damaged when his conviction was overturned by an Appeals Court led by reliable Republican Laurence Silberman.) As they show, Michael Vick need not worry about the loss of his lucrative endorsement contracts.

As jailed Nixon aide Charles Colson can attest, finding God while behind bars definitely helps pad your resume for work among the conservative chattering classes. His prison ministries enjoy government funding. And the born-again criminal is now a featured attraction at religious right events such as Justice Sunday. (Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.)

But Michael Vick's impressive qualifications as a Republican talking head don't end there. As it turns out, casually torturing animals for fun, profit or just mere convenience is commonplace in GOP leadership circles. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was a frequent visitor to animal shelters where the future Doctor adopted stray cats only to dissect them later as part of his learn-at-home medical studies. And more recently, it was revealed that GOP White House hopeful Mitt Romney was a repeat practitioner of rooftop canine waterboarding, strapping his dog Seamus' kennel to the top of the Romney family car. Vick's conviction will keep him off the much discussed Romney-Vick '08 ticket. But if Bill Frist is any indication, his past record of animal abuse might still allow the ex-Falcons QB to make videotape diagnoses of the comatose. At the very least, he can start his own blog.

Finally, Michael Vick can play up the "family values" angle so near and dear to the radical right. His younger brother Marcus, after all, followed Vick as the star quarterback of Virginia Tech. Like Michael, Marcus made an obscene gesture to fans. After multiple run-ins with the law, Marcus Vick was expelled by Virginia Tech. In much the same way that older brother Michael claimed he would be vindicated in court, Marcus confidently predicted he would be validated in the NFL draft. And while both of the tremendously gifted brothers are now out of football, Michael on July 30th signaled to his future right-wing friends that he is on the path to redemption:

"It's a crisis situation for me, but I'm going to get through it and I feel, by the grace of God, that's the only way. I believe in the outcome at the end, and that's why I put my faith in the man upstairs."

Michael Vick's playing days may be over, but his future as a purveyor of right-wing rage is there for the taking. It may not be football, but politics is a contact sport. And in the dog-eat-dog world of no-holds-barred right-wing punditry, Michael Vick is a natural.

ThinkProgress describes the seeming schedule non-coincidence:

The timing of Petraeus' testimony was first revealed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) this morning in a conference call with conservative bloggers. According to the National Review's Jim Geraghty, McCain said he had "been told" Petraeus would testify on the 11th:

"The calendar I've been told is that Petraeus testify 11th. We're off September 13 and 14 for Rosh Hoshannah. The Senate debate will begin September 18th."

This is just the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of Iraq war deceit and duplicity by the Bush administration. Despite the 9/11 Commission's conclusive finding that Al Qaeda and Saddam had no operational relationship and Bush's own past admissions that "we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th", the President persists in semantically linking the two. The latest example came just last month in the run up to the roll out of President Bush's fraudulent Iraq surge interim progress report. "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th," President Bush proclaimed on July 10, 2007, "is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims."

By this late date, we should expect nothing less from President Bush as he makes his last gasp attempt to peddle his fiasco in Iraq. The Petraeus report mandated by Congress apparently will not be authored by Petraeus himself, but by the White House. And given the Bush administration's repeated - but unsuccessful - efforts to have Petraeus testify only behind closed doors, the White House needed to pull a rabbit of out a hat in order to manage the fall-out from the unfolding disaster in Baghdad.

Which is where the bogus 9/11 link comes in handy. Again.

Leaving aside what they tell Americans during their myriad media appearances, the FP/CAP panel of experts offered a grim assessment of the U.S. war on terror in general and the surge in particular. In the third semi-annual Terrorism Index, 91% of the wise men and women surveyed now conclude the world is more dangerous for the United States, up 10% from February. A dismal 6% believe the U.S. is winning the war on terror, versus 84% who believe the struggle against Al Qaeda is being lost.

As for President Bush's surge, 53% now believe the additional U.S. troop presence in Baghdad is having a negative impact, up from just 17% in February. An overhwhelming majority - 68% - called for the U.S. to reploy its troops out of Iraq within the next 18 months. Importantly, 49% felt terrorist attacks in the United States were unlikely in the wake of an American withdrawal from Iraq. A further 39%s said there was no correlation between a U.S. pullout and the risk of attacks in the American homeland.

The FP/CAP study covers a range of other questions, including the emergence of likely terrorist safe havens (Pakistan, not Iraq, is seen as the greatest threat) and potential suppliers of nuclear arms to terrorists (Pakistan again the leader by far, with North Korea a distant second). For more, visit the Foreign Policy and Center for American Progress web sites.

Among the more tragi-comic aspects of the departure of Karl Rove is the media's renewed interest in the Bush Doctrine and its three tenets of no safe havens for terrorists, preventive war and democracy promotion. Last Monday, Rove claimed that the Bush Doctrine would live on and be the President's legacy. And this morning, the Washington Post described a frustrated President Bush stymied by what it portrayed as bureaucratic stonewalling of his ailing global democracy project.

Lost in this flurry of analyses is the basic truth. The Bush Doctrine isn't dying, it's dead.

As I wrote in June ("The Death of the Bush Doctrine"), the neoconservative vision of attacking terrorist safe havens, launching preemptive wars and declaring a crusade for democracy has been "mugged by reality." Karl Rove notwithstanding, the chaos in Gaza, the carnage in Baghdad and the conflict in Lebanon were the final gasps of the Bush Doctrine in its death throes:

At the end of the day, the Bush Doctrine was a myth. It was merely a rhetorical device, just political opportunism masquerading as grand strategy. Along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have a safe haven, indeed. In the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and the WMD debacle, most of the American political and military leadership (as well as virtually the entire international community) opposes pre-emptive strikes against potential future enemies such as Iran and North Korea. And the Bush administration's notion of democracy expansion remains highly selective, as the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Thailand and elsewhere attest. Even with Iraq, the embrace of democracy promotion was ex post facto: we didn't invade Iraq to promote democracy; we promote democracy because we invaded Iraq.

Of course, that cockeyed optimist Karl Rove would have none of it. In the Wall Street Journal piece last week announcing his departure, Rove proclaimed the irreversible triumph of the Bush Doctrine:

Mr. Rove also makes a spirited defense of this president's policy legacy, sometimes more convincingly than others. On foreign affairs, he predicts that at least two parts of the Bush Doctrine will live on: The policy that if you harbor a terrorist, you are as culpable as the terrorist; and pre-emption. "There may be a debate about degree," he says, "but it's going to be hard for any president to reverse that."

This morning, an expose in the Washington Post described bureaucratic infighting, the opposition of the State Department and Dick Cheney's "little-girl crush on strongmen" all combining to thwart the will of a visionary President Bush:

By the time he arrived in Prague in June for a democracy conference, President Bush was frustrated. He had committed his presidency to working toward the goal of "ending tyranny in our world," yet the march of freedom seemed stalled. Just as aggravating was the sense that his own government was not committed to his vision.

As he sat down with opposition leaders from authoritarian societies around the world, he gave voice to his exasperation. "You're not the only dissident," Bush told Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a leader in the resistance to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "I too am a dissident in Washington. Bureaucracy in the United States does not help change. It seems that Mubarak succeeded in brainwashing them."

While a gripping tale, the Post's story of bureaucratic intrigue, like Rove's grandstanding, is revisionist history pure and simple. The Bush Doctrine didn't fail because of poor execution or barriers to its implementation. It failed because it was fatally flawed from the very beginning, an idea whose time never came in a world to which it bore no relation.

The administration's wild euphoria of early 2005, with purple fingers in Iraq, Palestinian elections to replace the dead Arafat, the Cedar Revolution in Beirut and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, has long since passed. Hamas is triumphant in Gaza, Hezbollah resurgent in fractured Lebanon and the Maliki government in Baghdad gridlocked by sectarian conflict. Meanwhile, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are safely rebounding in their safe haven in Pakistan, a fact acknowledged by a National Intelligence Estimate and even President Bush himself. And back in Washington, Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani advisor Norman Podhoretz remain gleefully ignorant of the march of history, and continue to advocate bringing transformation to Iran through military strikes.

The Bush Doctrine does not - and should not - represent the future of American foreign policy. While the media debates its health, the patient has already passed away. The dangerous and delusional vision of President Bush and his amen corner has already been consigned to the dustbin of history.

As John Edwards said to Karl Rove last week, "goodbye, good riddance."

As the category 4 Hurricane Dean barrels towards his home state of Texas, President Bush is trying to "get out front" of the storm's potentially devastating impact. Their state already declared a disaster area, the Lone Star State will not only benefit from the lessons of Katrina; it looks like Texans may get the "Florida treatment."

The feverish preparations in Texas show the Bush administration is at least capable of learning some lessons from its 2005 Katrina calamity. Under new FEMA guidelines, Governor Rick Perry requested and President Bush approved pre-landfall disaster status for the states, triggering the deployment of emergency relief staff, resources and supplies to the area. As White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe described,

"Within the last year or so there has been a process put in place where we reach out to the states ahead of time and we don't just wait for them to begin to think about requesting the declaration. The result of Katrina is the federal government's pro-active stance to go to the states and say 'You have this option. Come to us now and request it. Call us. Get the paperwork going.'"

As I wrote in September 2005 ("FEMA: Florida Election Management Agency"), Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco learned that the hard way. While her state suffered through a disastrous, disorganized and delayed response to Katrina from FEMA and the Bush administration, Florida governor Jeb Bush had no such problems as his state weathered four hurricanes in 2004.

There is no mystery to this discrepancy, as GovExec.com wrote in "How FEMA Delivered Florida for Bush" on November 3rd, 2004, literally the day after the President won reelection:

Now that President Bush has won Florida in his 2004 re-election bid, he may want to draft a letter of appreciation to Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Seldom has any federal agency had the opportunity to so directly and uniquely alter the course of a presidential election, and seldom has any agency delivered for a president as FEMA did in Florida this fall.

FEMA's preparation, performance and questionable largesse during the four 2004 Florida hurricanes stands in stark contrast with its abysmal failure in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. While severe, the four Florida hurricanes (Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne) caused under 100 deaths and $22 billion in damage, a fraction of Katrina's destructive force. Yet FEMA's proactive role and President Bush's timely and personal involvement in Florida bear no relation to 2005:

• Hurricane Charley in August 2004 saw FEMA, National Guard troops, relief supplies and President Bush on stand by before the storm even made landfall. As the St. Petersburg Times reported on August 17th, 2004, "Governor Jeb Bush sought federal help Friday while Charley was still in the Gulf of Mexico. President Bush approved the aid about an hour after the hurricane made landfall." Cargo planes flew FEMA supplies supplies from a Georgia Air Force base to a staging area in Lakeland, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had stockpiled 11 truckloads of water and 14 truckloads of ice. Guy Daines, the former Pinellas County director of emergency services, was pleased and impressed with the rapid response of the National Guard and the delivery of pre-positioned supplies, stating "It amazed me how they got over 4,000 National Guard troops in there that quick. Rather than sit there and react, they are trying to get a jump-start on everything."
• FEMA again prepositioned personnel, supplies, and equipment for the Frances, which struck in the first week of September. A FEMA press release offered a laundry list descriptio of preparations for Frances. 30,000 tarps, 100 truckloads of water and 100 truckloads of ice were already in place. Emergency medical teams and four urban search and rescue teams were already in place. By September 6, 900,000 Meals Ready to Eat (MRE's) were stockpiled in Jacksonville. President Bush himself got into the act, distributing ice to Florida hurricane victims with brother Jeb.
• This performance was repeated for Ivan and Jeanne, which hit two and three weeks later, respectively. Again, FEMA was in place with food, ice, water, and financial aid in advance of the arrival of the storms. By September 29, FEMA was providing detailed daily updates on its relief eforts, including over $360 million in aid to individuals. This assistance was augmented by the IRS, which granted tax relief for Florida hurricane victims.
• Large and timely federal recovery funding was never an issue for the Florida Four. Congress passed $13 billion in recovery spending for the 2004 hurricanes, the bulk of which went to Florida. By August of 2005, $5.6 billion had been spent.

Whether that money had been spent wisely by FEMA director Michael Brown is another subject altogether. On May 18, 2005, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs held hearings about waste and corruption in the Florida programs. In a session titled, "FEMA's Response to the 2004 Florida Hurricanes: A Disaster for Taxpayers?," Senators Collins, Nelson and others grilled Michael Brown over his agency's largesse to residents of Florida. Florida Senator Nelson detailed numerous frauds perpetrated by Brown at FEMA. This featured over $31 million in payouts, including paying for home and car repairs, in Miami-Dade County, which had been virtually unaffected by the storms. More morose, FEMA managed to pay the costs of over 300 funerals statewide, even though medical examiners attributed only 123 to the hurricanes.

The rest, as they say, is history. Bush carried Florida over John Kerry by a surprisingly comfortable margin. As GovExec noted after election day, 2004:

"Bush later made a handful of other Florida visits to review storm-related damage, but the story on the ground was not Bush's hand-holding. Rather, it was FEMA's performance. It's impossible to know just how much of an effect FEMA had on the Florida vote...Even so, in a closely contested state where hundreds of thousands of voters suffered storm-related losses, it's equally hard to imagine that they didn't notice the agency's outreach."

No doubt, residents of George W. Bush's home state of Texas will notice the same thing.

In 1997, Seinfeld introduced Americans to the "unvitation." The unvitation enables the cynical person to seemingly satisfy the demands of social etiquette by extending an invitation to an event or gathering which they know the recipient will - or must - reject.

As we fast forward to 2007, Americans are witnessing Republicans perfect a similar act of social hypocrisy and cynicism: the Unpology. Facing recriminations for ethical failings, racist behavior, sexist statements or outright criminality, this new generation of Republican wrong-doers delivers the facade of apology by uttering obligatory words of remorse devoid of actual regret, contrition - or even an admission of guilt.

As AmericaBlog notes this morning, Rep. Bill Sali (R-ID) is just the latest Republican to offer Americans an unpology that is neither heartfelt nor sincere. On August 8th, Sali in an interview with the Christian American Family News Network joined CNN's Glenn Beck in attacking Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress.

"We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes - and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers."

Despite the Constitution's clear ban on religious tests for office, Sali refused to back down on his claim that the Founding Fathers fought for "principles found in Scripture" and that "the dangerous part is straying from these principles." But August 16th, even Sali recognized that propriety demanded the form, if not the actual content of, an apology to Ellison:

"I think that Keith deserves a call from me - not necessarily because of what's in my heart or in my mind, but because of how it's been portrayed."

We learned this morning that the Sali unpology was completed with a private email to Ellison. As Sali spokesman Wayne Hoffman put it, "He said that he wanted to make sure that Congressman Ellison understood that he meant no harm or disrespect."

Sali's is just the latest example of a specific type of faux Republican remorse, the Conditional Unpology. That is, the conservative in question is not objectively sorry per se, but wishes to expresses a patina of regret only to "those who may have been offended." Here, contrition is contingent on the perception of offense in the eye of the beholder.

The Conditional Unpology has a rich tradition in the recent history of Republican cynicism. Virginia Senator George Allen's "macaca moment" provides just one classic example. Refusing to acknowledge the racist baggage of his macaca comment, Allen delivered this textbook unpology:

"Yesterday, I apologized to anyone who may have [been] offended by the misinterpretation of my remarks. That was certainly not my intent...I never want to embarrass or demean anyone and I apologize if my comments offended this young man."

(It is worth noting that President Bush often relies on a cousin of the conditional unpology, the conditional eulogy. Bush noted the 2002 death of Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone by offering the conditional comfort, "May the good Lord bless those who grieve.")

Allen's pitfall suggests another relative of the conditional archetype is the Inadvertent Unpology. In this scenario, the guilty Republican claims he merely misspoke, accidentally used the wrong words or was unaware of the hidden meanings of terms he casually bandied about. Consider for example, the serial "tar baby" racist slurs of Tony Snow, Mitt Romney and John McCain. Snow claimed his critics were "unfamiliar with the pathways of American culture," while Romney spokesman Eric Ferhnstrom insisted his man was "unaware that some people find the term objectionable and he's sorry if anyone's offended." (The closest President Bush came to acknowledging error also hinged on a mere linguistic stumble: "Using bad language like, you know, 'bring them on' was a mistake.")

A third class of feigned GOP admissions of guilt is the Transformational Unpology. Here, the miscreant claims that the passage of time, tectonic shifts in social norms or some profound personal experience has so altered the wrong-doer as to make him now incapable of repeating the offense. Take for example the case of Trent Lott (R-MS). In the wake of his disastrous 2002 praise for legendary segregationist Strom Thurmond, Lott tried (unsuccessfully) to keep his Senate Majority Leader post by using the "that was then, this is now" approach on BET. "I'm part of the region and the history that has not always done what it was supposed to do," Lott said, adding "I'm now trying to find a way to deal with the understandable hurt that I have caused." Unfortunately for Lott, the "times are a-changin'" defense didn't work so well for someone from the land where the "old times there are not forgotten."

Another unique form of Republican pseudo-contrition is the Rehabitual Unpology. Ironically borrowed from Hollywood, this evasion claims that disease, circumstance or abuse beyond his control led the Republican in question to his sin. Mark Foley (R-FL), whose predilection for young, male Congressional pages helped sink the GOP during the 2006 mid-term elections, attributed his crimes to his own experiences with clergy sex abuse and entered an alcohol rehabilitation center. Following Foley into rehab was disgraced Ohio Congressman Bob Ney, convicted for his role in the Abramoff affair. For these and a host of other Republicans, the only real regrets were that the devil made them do it - and that they got caught.

The Scooter Libby affair introduced another conservative accountability avoidance strategy i