Back in 2005, Dick Durbin incorrectly characterized our conduct in Gitmo as being out of the Nazi playbook.

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control," he said, "you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings."

As it turns out, and as many right wing blogs pointed out, this was wrong.

More on the flip.

There is one group in America really taking it on the chin in these tough economic times.

Justin Sullivan, managing director of Regent Jet, which leases private airplanes, said most clients in real estate and on Wall Street are switching to chartered jets over private jets, and cutting their flight budgets by about 25 percent. One New York real estate developer cut his budget to less than $250,000 a year from $1.5 million a year.

"A year ago, he would have only flown Gulfstreams," Mr. Sullivan said. "Now it’s moving to the point where he’s flying Beech jets and Learjets."

Imagine the shame and humiliation of flying a Learjet instead of a Gulfstream and having to cut your travel budget a staggering 83 percent!

Yes, the President has finally demonstrated personal sacrifice because of the war. No, recently married Jenna and her sister, not Jenna weren't drafted and on their way to boot camp. He isn't donating his Presidential salary to a veteran's charity. He isn't flying to Baghdad to lead from the front.

He's giving up golf.

Continued...

Uh oh.

 Vice President Dick Cheney, arriving in Philadelphia today to watch economic stimulus rebate checks processed at a government financial center, had a thick hardcover book tucked under his arm as he got off Air Force Two at Willow Grove Naval Air Station.

   Aides said the book was "Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45," by the British historian Max Hastings.

Holy Joe Lieberman appeared with the fat, drug-addicted, multiple marriage-having adulterer chickenhawk, draft-dodger Rush Limbaugh at an awards banquet and had this to say:

In fact, to show you how much things have changed for me, one of my greatest missions this year is to convince Rush to support the Republican candidate for President!

Via Michele Malkin: (I've always wanted to put that in a Kos diary!)

Two of Sen. John McCain’s top advisers and fundraisers are among several Republican and Democratic presidential campaign officials whose lobbying firms have been paid more than $15 million by foreign governments since 2005.

What governments do you ask? More on the flip...

 My own definition emphasizes the following:

- a commitment to individual liberty, tempered by the conviction that genuine freedom entails more than simply an absence of restraint;

- a belief in limited government, fiscal responsibility, and the rule of law;

- veneration for our cultural inheritance combined with a sense of stewardship for Creation;

- a reluctance to discard or tamper with traditional social arrangements;

- respect for the market as the generator of wealth combined with a wariness of the market’s corrosive impact on humane values;

- a deep suspicion of utopian promises, rooted in an appreciation of the sinfulness of man and the recalcitrance of history.

How the fuck is this legal?

Sen. John McCain plans at least one campaign event on his week-long congressional trip to Europe and the Middle East: a March 20 fundraiser in London. An invitation sent out by the campaign says the luncheon will be held at Spencer House, St. James's Place, "by kind permission of Lord Rothschild OM GBE and the Hon Nathaniel Rothschild." Tickets to the invitation-only event cost $1,000 to $2,300. Attire is listed as "lounge suits."

No, not the lounge suits. The raising of campaign funds by foreign royalty?

The Washington Post got its hands on a manuscipt of Douglas Feith's attack memoir and dribbles out excerpts. Calling it a "massive score settling work", there is nothing shocking or revealing, other than it cements Feith's reputation as what General Tommy Franks calls stupidest fucking guy on the planet.

In what may be a shock to people who just weren't paying attention, the Post starts out with the "revelation" that Bush was hellbent on going to war:

Among the disclosures made by Feith in "War and Decision," scheduled for release next month by HarperCollins, is Bush's declaration, at a Dec. 18, 2002, National Security Council meeting, that "war is inevitable." The statement came weeks before U.N. weapons inspectors reported their initial findings on Iraq and months before Bush delivered an ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Feith, who says he took notes at the meeting, registered it as a "momentous comment."

More exposition of the obvious after the break.

Many of you have already read today's front page post about how Rove doesn't think baiting Obama about his name is a good idea and how some state parties just can't resist. Even before this front page post, I read Juan Cole's post of the year, if not the decade:

So, anyway, Obama's first two names mean "Blessing, the Good." If we are lucky enough to get him for president, we can only hope that his names are prophetic for us.

Lisa Schiffern has written some things before that manage to both simultaneously red- AND race-bait. Remember this?

Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama's mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student. Love? Sure, why not? But what else was going on around them that made it feasible?

Here's your sign, Lisa: Don't want a cheap accusation of racism leveled at you? A first step is not to be racist!

Now, she links approvingly to this atrocity:

Never underestimate the influence of a wife who bitch-slaps her husband in public.

What next, Lisa? An extended essay on how Michelle Obama's vagina has teeth?

More on the flip...

Last night, Obama relayed an anecdote about how the Army in Afghanistan is being short changed to fight the war in Iraq:

OBAMA: You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a
rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon.  Ended up
being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been
sent to Iraq.  

And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition,
they didn't have enough Humvees.  They were actually capturing Taliban
weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for
them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.  

It checks out.

The National Review goes back to it's roots as a racist, anti-Brown vs. Board of Education kind of publication with this call for an investigation of Obama's parents:

Time for some investigative journalism about the Obama family's background, now that his chances of being president have increased so much.

Why does Lisa Schiffern want to get all Michelle Malkin on Obama's ass and tell us what brand of bathtub Obama floated his rubber duckies in?

[Interracial marriage] was, of course, an explicit tactic of the Communist party to stir up discontent among American blacks, with an eye toward using them as the leading edge of the revolution.  

Of course it was, Lisa,  you racist asshole....

A repeat from yesterday...

We had been told that 'British lives on British streets' were at risk ... If this caused another 7/7, how could we say that our investigation was more important? ...  

In case you haven’t been following this, the British Government had launched an investigation into defense contractor BAE for paying bribes to Saudi officials, including Bush family BFF and former Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar bin Sultan. As you probably already know,Prince Bandar knew about the Invasion of Iraq before our own State Department.  As it turns out, while Prince Bandar was getting more access to our deepest secrets than our own State Department, he was also getting up to 120 million Pounds a year deposited into a Washington DC Riggs Bank account for facilitating the 43 billion pound Al-Yamanah arms deal between Saudi Arabia and BAE.

The investgation was quashed because Bandar threatened the UK if they didn't stop.

More chilling details on the flip...

In case you haven’t been following this, the British Government had launched an investigation in to defense contractor paying bribes to Saudi officials, including Bush family BFF and former Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar bin Sultan. As you probably already know,Prince Bandar knew about the Invasion of Iraq before our own State Department.  As it turns out, while Prince Bandar was getting more access to our deepest secrets than our own State Department, he was also getting up to 120 million Pounds a year deposited into a Washington DC Riggs Bank account for facilitating the 43 billion pound Al-Yamanah arms deal between Saudi Arabia and BAE.

The investgation was quashed because Bandar threatened the UK if they didn't stop.

More chilling details on the flip...

Hey people in Idaho, DC, Alaska, Kansas, Washington, Georgia, Nebraska, Colorado, Minnesota, South Carolina, Virginia, North Dakota, Maryland, Louisiana, Maine, Utah, Alabama, Delaware, Iowa, Connecticut and Missouri:

Mark Penn says your states aren't significant:

"Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn't won any of the significant states -- outside of Illinois?" Chief Strategist Mark Penn said. "That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama."

Much has already been made about the significance of Michigan and Florida, the two states with the apostate Democratic committees that, through their own hubris and stupidity, invalidated the wishes of their party members. Now, in an interview with the Politico, we find the true reason why Hillary wants to seat the delegates from those two states:

...I think that both Michigan and Florida should count because these are two states we have to carry.

Bill Kristol comes out swinging (and strangely optimistic) finally stepping in line behind McCain:

...[T]he conservative movement's big talkers spent the days before Super Tuesday indulging in a fiery display of McCain Derangement Syndrome...Republican voters were more sensible. They went for McCain, selecting the most electable and impressive candidate. The conservative movement is licking its wounds, but will recover.

In the rush to damn McCain, the movement paid obeisance to some dubious advisers. It listened to the pronouncements of Tom DeLay, who had previously done so much to convince his countrymen that conservatives could not be trusted to govern. It hearkened to the political counsel of Rick Santorum, who lost his Senate seat in the swing state of Pennsylvania two years ago by 17 percentage points. It took seriously the aspersions of James Dobson, whose "conscience" does not permit him to vote for John McCain.

Yeah! Screw those idiots DeLay, Santorum and Dobson!