Birmingham Blues

Molly Ivins, one of my favorite political columnists, died today from breast cancer.  She was 62.
The writer, who made a living poking fun at Texas politicians, whether they were in her home base of Austin or the White House, revealed in early 2006 that she was being treated for breast cancer for the third time.
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Pam highlights an editorial in the Alamagordo (New Mexico) Daily News that made me crack up laughing.  The paper’s assistant editor, Jeff Stevens, is irritated, and rightly so, by the introduction of a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman.
It seems to me Republicans spend more time thinking about gay sex than any other [...]

Troy King is either totally clueless or completely tone-deaf when it comes to ethics.  The Birmingham News keeps finding more and more questionable situations in which Troy just happened to find himself.  The latest?  He accompanied the director of an advocacy group when she went to ask Roy Johnson for money.  Mr. Johnson was then [...]

Fleischer went to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in 2004 and offered to give testimony regarding the Valerie Plame leak investigation in return for immunity, and he’ll testify in the Scooter Libby trial next week.
Once the deal was struck in February 2004, Fleischer revealed that he had discussed Plame with reporters in July 2003, days before leaving his [...]

As if we didn’t already know.  Dick Cheney’s former communications director, a witness in the Scooter Libby trial, confirmed that the Bush administration did its best to freeze out unfriendly reporters and dump bad news late on Friday afternoons to bury it as quickly as possible.  And too many reporters just accepted whatever Bushco fed them without [...]

…and the legislature isn’t even in session.  Several big stories have hit recently:
First, I was out of town when the Troy King/Alabama Power story broke.  Seems Troy took his family and a bunch of church friends to a luxury skybox full of food and drink (not that kind of drink, y’all — Troy is a [...]

Bob Geiger has a graphic showing Bush’s current approval/disapproval ratings compared to those of Reagan and Clinton at the same point in their second terms.  It ain’t pretty:

Of course, we all know The Decider doesn’t care about public opinion, but the people seeking the 2008 Republican nomination can’t be enjoying this.
via The Vanity Press

I tried to watch the State of the Union address last night.  I really did.  Got all the way to the point when Bush started introducing his special guests and then switched over to a rerun of Special Victims Unit.  Here’s a little secret: I find SOTU addresses excruciating, no matter who’s delivering them.  They [...]

Susan at Local Tint has come back from a much too long hiatus and will, I hope, continue to entertain us with her witty and insightful (and sometimes snarky) posts for the foreseeable future.  Her blog is the first I ever visited, back when I was looking for information about the candidates in a contentious special election for state [...]

Are we about to see Dick Cheney, unindicted co-conspirator?  More as it breaks.