President Bush tries to play hands with Rep. Jack Murtha during happier times. Republican Sens. Rick Santorum, left, and Arlen Specter, try to curb their enthusiasm.
A few issues are bugging me today. Only a few.
1. A right-wing blog with connections to GOPUSA (Remember the faux White House journalist Jeff Gannon?) has cast doubts on whether U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., deserved the Purple Heart medals he received in Vietnam while serving as a Marine. It is a tried and true tactic of the Bush/Rove administration: whenever you’re criticized, smear your opponent. It is reminiscent of those good old days when the Swift Boat Veterans “Swiftboated” Bush’s presidential opponent John Kerry. The premise of this attack on Murtha, who has become an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, is that Murtha allegedly told a congressman that he had not deserved the medals. The problem is that the congressman who supposedly gave that information to the source for the Cyberidiot story is now dead. How convenient!
Let us just look past how repugnant the character assassination has become for critics of not just Bush’s policies but Bush himself. The most notable targets, of course, were Gov. Ann Richards whom Bush defeated as governor along with Sen. John McCain and former Ambassador Joe Wilson (wife of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame).
This doubt-casting may ultimately have a negative effect on military personnel and those who are considering joining the service. What good is a decoration for some achievement if someone who has a beef with you is just going to smear your name? Such reptilian behavior as practiced by the Swiftboaters and the neo-Swiftboaters dishonors those who did receive a Purple Heart for their injuries or their ultimate sacrifice in combat.
2. The president continues to say and have his minions say that spying on Americans is legal because he is the president and this is war. The danger is that if Bush makes his case and the war on terror is never-ending then we have just lost part of our civil liberties for good. The argument that spying is okay if it keep us safe is ridiculous if you care anything about the concept of freedom.
3. Judge and soon to be Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito may be the best jurist to come along since White Bread. He may be qualified. He may be brilliant. And even if Alito had owned up to his joining a radical right-wing group when he attended Princeton I don’t care as long as he disavowed that group or its beliefs. He did disavow the group’s beliefs. But he clung to “I can’t remember” when it came to anything about having joined the group.
Alito said he thought that he might have joined in response to threats to an ROTC program at Princeton. He just doesn’t remember. If he was out getting wasted all the time during those days then I might buy that. But I seriously doubt Alito was a big party dog. His faulty memory in that area is very suspect considering he able to remember tons upon tons of legal minutiae that would probably make a normal person’s head explode.
Well, that’s all that’s bothering me right now except I’m hungry. I have an easy fix for that in the kitchen. As for the other problems …