No-Labor Day Weekend Bloggerhea

-- Governor 39% commuted the death sentence of Kenneth Foster. Truly amazing. The vile postings of some of the Houston Chronicle's online readers notwithstanding, yesterday was something to be celebrated.

-- Gay people can marry in Iowa -- at least for now.

-- Rick Noriega was endorsed by several Texas icons this week, and would like you to sign his ballot petition (scroll to the bottom of this link, click on the .pdf file and print it using legal-sized paper). And as we near the goal for Changing the Equation, time's running out for you to be one of the Great Eight Hundred.

-- Poor Larry Craig. He sincerely believes he's not gay. Certainly a 62-year-old man who's been having clandestine homosexual relationships going all the way back to the House page scandal of 1982 is never going to be psychologically capable of admitting his homosexuality, that's for sure:

"He may very well not think of himself as being gay, and these are just urges that he has," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "It's the tragedy of homophobia. People create these walls that separate themselves from who they really are."

This is precisely what Pastor Ted Haggard believes (according to Alexandra Pelosi). That he just has a *ahem* "drinking problem". And note also the distinction between how the Washington Republicans have reacted to Craig compared to David "I don't use hookers" Vitter.

The GOP wants to kick Craig out of politics because he's gay (and because they can easily replace him with another right-wing freak). Who's the hypocrite now?

-- This week marked two sad anniversaries: two years since Katrina wiped out New Orleans, and ten years since Princess Di was killed in a terrible auto accident.

-- comically care-free actor Owen Wilson apparently tried to kill himself.

-- Ted Nugent threatened to kill Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He was not arrested nor was he charged with the felony. Let's be reminded that when Ted's duty called, he shat his pants rather than serve his country:

Except when it was time to register for the draft during the Vietnam era. By his own admission, Nugent stopped all forms of personal hygiene for a month and showed up for his draft board physical in pants caked with his own urine and feces, winning a deferment. Creative!

-- Iraq has failed to meet all but three of the 18 guidelines for progress, according to the General Accounting Office. So the Bush administration charged that the benchmarks for success were "set too high", and sent the GAO additional "information" in order to make their case that progress was, indeed, being made:

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Thursday that after reviewing a draft of the GAO report, policy officials "made some factual corrections" and "offered some suggestions on a few of the actual grades" assigned by the GAO.

"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,'" Morrell said.

I believe this is the same grading curve that was used to get George W. Bush through Harvard with a gentleman's C.

-- And on that note, have a good Labor Day weekend. Don't do anything more strenuous than turn the steaks over on your grill -- and thank a union member, whose forebearers provided this holiday, along with a 40-hour work week and health care and retirement benefits among many other things, for you to enjoy.

Who's next at Justice?

Chertoff? Ted Olson? Some lesser conservative star?

I say it could be Orrin Hatch, for these reasons:

1. He can continue to provide cover for the Bushies as the investigations move forward, maintaining that year-and-a-half-head start the criminals still need. Hatch is a loyalist and Bush won't name anything but.

2. A tenure as AG, even a caretaker one, could be considered a capstone to his lengthy career in public service.

3. He can rest easy knowing another ultra-conservative will replace him in the Senate, by appointment and/or special election. Hatch is too old to give a damn about sticking around, hoping for a GOP majority comeback now quite unlikely in his remaining lifetime (and hopefully, for that matter, his children's).

4. No chance of him achieving his greatest ambition -- getting to the Supreme Court -- with a Democratic presidency coming in 2008.

5. A Hatch appointment avoids a bruising confirmation battle; something Bush has never shied from before, but may no longer have the stomach to fight. A Chertoff confirmation is guaranteed to keep stirring the turd, to say nothing of whomever might be named to replace him at DHS.

He has a "wide stance" when he goes to the toilet

That's why his foot slid all the way into the next bathroom stall, touching the foot of a plainclothes officer at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.

That is seriously what Senator Larry Craig of Idaho is claiming.

Sen. Craig, a conservative Republican from a very conservative state and one of Mitt Romney's most prominent supporters, was arrested for lewd conduct in June as a result of this incident. He pleaded guilty to the charge on August 8 but the report was made public only today. Craig now regrets the guilty plea, thus the "wide stance" defense. He previously claimed that his outing as a homosexual had "no basis in fact".

And so another Black Monday for Republicans comes to a close. (I don't know about Mike Vick's politics, but Phil Garner's were never in doubt.)

Update (8/28): The Pink Lady channels me, for once.

Uncle Drayton cans Scrap Iron and Poo-Poo

I could have just as easily typed "FINALLY" twice.

This has been an interesting Monday so far (and I'm not even counting Michael Vick going to the dogs -- err, court to plead guilty).

Phil Garner was a weak manager -- this reputation preceded him long before he arrived in 2004 -- but the real mercy killing today was GM Tim Purpura, who despite fourteen years in the Astros organization didn't have a clue how to do his job and never had half the authority needed to do it anyway. The last straw was probably his inability to sign the team's most recent draft picks, but his fate was sealed with the disastrous results of the Jason Jennings trade during the last offseason. Scratch that: the last straw was probably the boos rained down on Poopura when he was recognized at Jeff Bagwell's retirement ceremony yesterday.

I'm with Justice: Coop is a good choice not just to finish out the year but deserves at least a one-year contract to show what he can do. McLane's heavy-handedness, not to mention his penny-pinching ways, may well preclude the Astros from getting a savvy talent in the front office.

Hope I'm wrong about that last, because we may be in for a disappointing several few years with the local nine if I am not.

Update: You just can't top this. Caption, please.


"Nobody could have predicted this, could they, Phil?"

Update (8/28): Tom Kirkendall, with whom I agree on almost all sporting matters and almost nothing else, delves deeper into these themes. (He calls it 'due diligence', I call it 'tedious detail'.)

FINALLY.

Allah be praised, Alberto is Gone-zo at last.

My only wish is that, as with John Ashcroft, the replacement isn't worse.

I'll update this thread today with new developments (speculation, some rich creamy schadenfreude, and so on).

Update:

"So paste a tail upon my nose and point me toward the grass. I'm going back to Texas to be one more horse's ass." -- Shel Siverstein

When an army withdraws from a battlefield, it doesn't just turn and run. It slips away one or two units at a time, leaving other units in place to cover the exit. It's called strategic withdrawal.

Like Rove's, Gonzales' departure from Washington should be seen as part of the greater Bush administration strategic withdrawal from Washington. He is, in Shel Siverstein's words, "Going back to Texas to be one more horse's ass."

Better a strategic withdrawal now than a wholesale retreat in January of 2009. A trickle of departures, followed by presidential pardons on the way out of town, will be smoother and more historically graceful somehow.

(For pure symmetry, it would be fun to see the Bushies conclude the whole sorry show with one last James Baker and Theodore Olson appearance in front of the Supreme Court. Then Baker could leave D.C. for Texas aboard the Enron plane the Bush's lawyers took from Texas to Florida in November of 2000.)

LMAO

For an administration known for its cronyism, and alas for an alarmingly incompetent group of cronies, Gonzales was the granddaddy of them all. He lacked the integrity, the intellect and the independence to perform his duties in a manner befitting the job for which he was chosen. And when he and his colleagues got caught in the act, his rationales and explanations for the purge of the U.S. Attorneys were so empty and shallow and incoherent that even the staunchest Republicans could not turn them into steeled spin. Devoid of any credibility, Gonzales in the end was a sad joke when he came to Capitol Hill.

And the last lie (we all hope) was told to his own spokesperson:

As late as Sunday afternoon, Mr. Gonzales himself was denying through his spokesman that he was quitting. The spokesman, Brian Rohrekasse, said Sunday that he telephoned the attorney general about the reports of his imminent resignation “and he said it wasn’t true — so I don’t know what more I can say.”

Update (8/28): The powerful dishonesty of Alberto Gonzales includes this Top Six list of his most brazen lies. And from Nora Ephron:

I hope (Gonzales is) not worried about his legacy, because he will have one, and it will be not unlike what awaits almost all the members of this administration: they will be fodder for art. Yes, art. Dick Cheney said a couple of months ago that history would be his judge, but I beg to differ: history will be nothing compared to the plays. This administration will be the subject of hundreds of plays; the playwrights will be drawn again and again to the astonishing, amazing panoply of evil and complicity the Bush Administration has provided. Gonzales will be a hilarious comic foil in most of these productions -- a jack-in-the-box who will pop out, say he has no recollection whatsoever of anything, and pop back in. Short actors will kill to play him.

By the way, I have a pet theory about Alberto Gonzales: I've always believed that the reason the President called Gonzales Fredo was that when they first met, Bush incorrectly believed that Gonzales' first name was Alfredo, and Gonzales was too much of a toady to correct him.

I meant to download that theory before it was too late, and the good news is, where this administration is concerned, it's never going to be too late.

I'd like to add a personal admonition to the once and future Houstonian: you may now remove the American flag lapel pin. You goddamned traitor.

The Weekly TexProgBlog Wrangle

It's time once again for the weekly Texas Progressive Alliance blog round-up, again brought to us by Vince from Capitol Annex.

Getting this week off to a great start, we want to thank our friends over at the 50 State Blog Network for taking note of us and mentioning our round-up in theirs.

To the rafters with #5

''I can truly say I've made so many great friends because of this game,'' Bagwell said. ''You guys have made me better. I've had so much fun over the years.''

He was joined by Craig Biggio and Brad Ausmus and a distinguished list of former Astros, including Larry Dierker, Jimmy Wynn and Mike Scott.