THIS MODERN WORLD

Josh Marshall has a revealing view into where the Republicans’ priorities lie this year :

It all started earlier this evening when TPM Reader HH was on the receiving end of one of Dole’s blast emails begging contributions for the Republican senate committee.

Says Dole, in her pitch: “If Democrats take control of the Senate in ’06, they will cancel the Bush tax cuts, allow liberal activist judges to run our courts and undermine all Republican efforts to win the War on Terror. Even worse …” Now, here you know it’s got to be bad. Even I got a little worried and considered sending in some money since losing the War on Terror for America would already be a pretty bad thing for the Democrats to do. But … well, let’s rejoin Dole in mid-moonbat. “Even worse, they will call for endless congressional investigations and possibly call for the impeachment of President Bush!”

Even worse than undermining the War on Terror is the possibility of “investigations”. Wow. It makes sense that the GOP would be so terrified since they’re the ones who made the term “investigation” synonymous with “partisan witch-hunt”. Don’t worry, Sen. Dole. Just because your party is full of people who use the wheels of government to destroy their political enemies doesn’t mean everyone wants to short change the American people in an endless quest for power and money. Even if the Democrats won back both houses of Congress, they’d never in a million years be able to match the moral and ethical bankruptcy of the Starr Investigation.

Speaking in Spanish. The President was for it before he was against it. From last week’s press conference :

Q Mr. President, a cultural question for you. There is a version of the National Anthem in Spanish now. Do you believe it will hold the same value if sung in Spanish as in English?

THE PRESIDENT: No I don’t, because I think the National Anthem ought to be sung in English. And I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English, and they ought to learn to sing the National Anthem in English.

Oh really?? Is that why you’ve spent so much money on Spanish-language advertising like this?

Apparently George Bush has decided that this year it’s more important to kiss xenophobic, conservative asses than hard-working, Latino asses.

You can thank him here (for this, in case you’ve been in a bathysphere or stranded at a Himalyan base camp for the past few days).

He has almost redeemed himself for not having me on as a guest.

In the late eighties, Mark Hertsgaard wrote a hugely important book called On Bended Knee, which catalogued the myriad ways in which the press was in thrall to the Reagan administration (contrary to the myth of the liberal media, which was in play even then).

I didn’t realize how badly I wanted someone to do the job for our current age until I started reading Eric Boehlert’s Lapdogs. As soon as I picked it up, I realized that this is what we’ve needed. If you follow the blogs closely, there probably won’t be any huge surprises, but it’s useful (if overwhelming) to have the entire argument laid out in one coherent narrative, rather than picking it up in bits and pieces over time. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Put it this way: I have a general rule against taking work-related reading matter to bed — my nighttime reading tends more toward mysteries and other escapist fiction — but this one is engrossing enough, I broke my own rule. A worthy successor to Hertsgaard, and a fabulous gift for anyone who yammers on about the liberal media, and how hard they are on Bush.

A couple of other media notes…

Official friend of TMW Daniel Handler has a new book out, here. (You may be more familiar with his alter ego, Lemony Snicket.)

And Neil Young’s new CD, Living With War, is available for preorder on Amazon — #3 with a bullet, as I write this.

And speaking of books and CDs and things — a number of generous readers sent birthday gifts off my Amazon wish list last month. I’m way behind on everything as a result of the book tour, including sending out thank yous, so I wanted to acknowledge those gifts here, and express my gratitude. Those unexpected packages showing up in the middle of the workweek are one of the happier little perks of this job.

The Congressional Research Service has issued a report on U.S. spending on the Iraq, saying it will soon reach $320 billion. As a Washington Post story notes, this includes “$2.5 billion diverted from other spending authorizations in 2001 and 2002 to prepare for the invasion.”

$2.5 billion. That’s even more than the $700 million Bob Woodward reported in Plan of Attack:

On July 17 [2002], [Tommy] Franks updated Rumfeld on the preparatory tasks in the region. He carefully listed the cost of each and the risk to the mission if they didn’t proceed along the timeline which set completion by December 1. Total cost: about $700 million.

The big-muscle movement was for airfields and fuel infrastructure in Kuwait where a massive covert public works program had already been launched…

Some of the funding would come from the supplemental appropriations bill then being worked out in Congress for the Afghanistan war and the general war on terrorism. The rest would come from old appropriations.

By the end of July, Bush had approved some 30 projects that would eventually cost $700 million. He discussed it with Nicholas E. Calio, the head of White House congressional relations. Congress, which is supposed to control the purse strings, had no real knowledge or involvement, had not even been notified that the Pentagon wanted to reprogram money.

Now, here’s Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution:

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.

So, back in olden times when we still cared what the Constitution said, Bush could clearly be impeached for this. Thank goodness those days are behind us. Kudos also to the Washington Post for demonstrating this by putting the reference to it in the second-to-last paragraph in an A16 story.