ANN COULTER LIVID ABOUT MIERS NOMINATION

Hilarious. Ann Coulter on Hannity & Colmes, like many other conservatives, frothing at the mouth about Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. According to Coulter, "It's embarrassing...insulting" to "conservatives and evangelicals," which Ann said she numbers herself among. Miers, she says, is not even close to being numbered among the few who are worthy of the rarefied post. Asked why Bush would have said Miers was "the best person" he could find, Ann replied, "He hates us." Presumably, she meant conservatives.

Coulter objected to Miers' education at SMU as not being good enough (she should have gone to a "top school" according to AC) -- an assertion I take issue with, being the mother of an SMU graduate (triple major, magna cum laude!). She made (rightfully, I think) fun of Miers' resume, citing stints on the Dallas City Council and on the Texas Lottery Commission. Ann thinks a Supreme Court justice should be someone who, like John Roberts (whom she characterized as a "stealth candidate") can opine on obscure Constitutional issues, which she doesn't think Miers can.

Ann noted that this is a bad time, following upon the FEMA leadership fiascos, for Bush to be appointing a crony that doesn't measure up to the highest standards. She thinks Bush was thumbing his nose at conservatives who objected to his pal Alberto Gonzales, more or less saying with the Miers appointment, "You don't like my buddy Al? Well, try this!"

Ann's buddy Sean Hannity, who rarely if ever can bring himself to utter or countenance criticism of the pResident, did not seem particularly happy with her anti-Miers fervor and anti-Bush vitriol. Co-host Alan Colmes could hardly contain his pleasure at same.

At the end of the interview, Ann seemed to want to realign herself with her pal Sean, unctuously saying to him, "Sean, are you going to ride a horse again? You looked so studly! So macho!"

Ick.

Hard to follow the news when you're working from 5 a.m. until 10 p.m. on a film shoot. But just let me say, I love hotels who have wireless. I love technology that gives me news reports on my wristwatch or Blackberry.

But sometimes, folks, the job's just got to be done. And for tonight, I'm so exhausted and in pain as a result of being on my feet all day just three weeks after being released from a cast for a double-break in my leg, I can't see that I have anything significant to contribute to the political discourse. So I bid you all good night and hope to return when the Florida humidity doesn't weigh me down -- maybe tomorrow night!

"THE DESTROYER IS DESTROYED"

Tom DeLay indicted on another charge.

"Ronnie Earle has stooped to a new low with his brand of prosecutorial abuse," DeLay said in a prepared statement. "He is trying to pull the legal equivalent of a 'do-over' since he knows very well that the charges he brought against me last week are totally manufactured and illegitimate. This is an abomination of justice."

Does DeLay mean that THESE charges ARE legitimate? And that his only gripe is that "the game has started; you don't get a chance to amend the charges"?

He must not watch much Law and Order. Jack McCoy could tell him better.

Buy Blue

Reader realitycheckmate has tipped me to a great web site: buyblue.org. It makes it easy to see that companies like Academy Sports & Outdoor, Apple Computer, Barnes & Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, Choice Hotels, The Clorox Company, Costco, Crate & Barrel, Ernest & Julio Gallo Winery, Estee Lauder, Gap, H&R Block, Hyatt Hotels, JCrew, JetBlue, Working Assets Funding Service, Reebok, QualComm, PG&E, Lehman Brothers, and Adobe all lean significantly towards the Democrats in their political contributions.

"Stop support companies that don't support your values. Reward companies that have a triple bottom line...People, planet AND profit."

Sounds good to me.

THE EXTERMINATOR BECOMES A PEST TO THE GOP

The Dallas Morning News looks for what Tom DeLay and Ronnie Earle have in common. They're both relentless and tenacious, but I'll take Ronnie's motivations and ideals over Tom's cynical corruption any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Interestingly, the conservative and staunchly pro-GOP DMN doesn't make DeLie sound very good in comparison with Earle. More evidence that the Bug Man has crossed a bridge too far to recover?

If Mr. DeLay sees Wednesday's indictment on charges of conspiracy to violate the state's election laws as a political witch hunt by a "partisan zealot," Mr. Earle sees it as part of a mission to save democracy.

"We have a problem," Mr. Earle told an Austin group two weeks ago. "It's the corruption of our representative democracy by large amounts of money. This is an issue of concentrated power, and concentrated power in any form erodes democracy."

The 63-year-old prosecutor said the threat of big money in politics has animated him as he has pursued a three-year grand jury investigation of corporate cash in Texas races.

"Ronnie's not an ideologue in the sense of people who have fixed views on some sort of issue," said former Austin lawyer David Richards. "He's an idealist."

Political master
Mr. DeLay's politics are decidedly practical and comfortably concrete. Conservatives and liberals. Allies and obstacles. Good guys and bad guys. Exterminators and pests.

THE GOP'S "HIGHER STANDARD"

Watched Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) spending a rather weird time with Wolf Blitzer on Reliable Sources, comparing the Iraq War with the American Civil War and the American revolution against the British and saying that Iraq comes off real well, considering that Lincoln was losing 10,000 troops per month while we’ve only lost 2000, and that our constitution two hundred years ago said a black man was 3/10 of a man and the iraq constitution improves on that. What the ????

He also said it’s very possible that there’s a conspiracy between Ronnie Earl (Travis County, TX DA) and Democrats to get Tom DeLay. He DID say he’s not comfortable with Tom DeLay as his leader. “We [the GOP] got into power by promising we’d live up to a higher standard, and I don’t think in recent years we have.”

Wolf replied, "Well, at least that's an honest answer."

GOP DATELINE: SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY

Greetings from Atlanta, first stop on the film shoot. Another anonymous hotel room with pillows way too large for my comfort. I thought I'd grab a snooze on the company plane, but we got into a flaming discussion of the week's activities and issues at work and hypered each other into a frenzy.

BLOGGER was down for maintenance this morning when I was watching the Sunday morning news shows and doing some reading I wanted to comment on, so I saved it for now.

The new issue of Newsweek features an article titled "Troubled Waters" that suggests the GOP is facing an unprecedented breakdown. These were my favorite parts:

Still, when it came time to discuss precisely what would happen next, discipline broke down. DeLay and Hastert had wanted Rep. David Dreier to step in as acting majority leader. Instead, the hard-charging Roy Blunt got the job. Members demanded full-scale elections sooner rather than later for a new permanent Leadership, and if DeLay doesn't escape his legal problem by January—hardly a certainty—that vote will occur and he won't be in the race. Reaching for inspiration, one acolyte compared the Speaker to Robert E. Lee and DeLay to Stonewall Jackson: when the latter was wounded, the former still won a crucial battle. But another member elicited wry laughter by pointing out that Jackson had been shot, accidentally, by his own troops.
…
Indeed, polltaker Frank Luntz, who helped develop the "Contract With America" message that swept Republicans to power in 1994, was on the Hill last week warning the party faithful that they could lose both the House and the Senate in next year's congressional elections.
…
In politics, timing is everything, and GOP officials worried that the many Abramoff investigations—not to mention a DeLay trial in Texas, if it comes to that—could take place next summer, just before the midterm elections. (emphasis mine)

Jonathan Alter lands some gut punches to Tom DeLay:

But never before has the leadership of the House been hijacked by a small band of extremists bent on building a ruthless shakedown machine, lining the pockets of their richest constituents and rolling back popular protections for ordinary people. These folks borrow like banana republics and spend like Tip O'Neill on speed.

I have no idea if DeLay has technically broken the law. What interests me is how this moderate, evenly divided nation came to be ruled on at least one side of Capitol Hill by a zealot. This is a man who calls the Environmental Protection Agency "the Gestapo of government" and favors repealing the Clean Air Act because "it's never been proven that air toxins are hazardous to people"; who insists repeatedly that judges on the other side of issues "need to be intimidated" and rejects the idea of a separation of church and state; who claims there are no parents trying to raise families on the minimum wage—that "fortunately, such families do not exist" (at least Newt Gingrich was intrigued by the challenges of poverty); who once said: "A woman can't take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure." I could go on all day. Congress has always had its share of extremists. But the DeLay era is the first time the fringe has ever been in charge.