Pelosi has a best-selling book. Tell me that these unjust deserts don’t come directly from an abuse of her abusive political position.
Politicians should be prohibited by law from exploiting their already exploitative positions for yet more profit. Paid positions as analysts on the networks must be outlawed too—perhaps even after they leave office. I’m open to any of your rationalizations on this front.
Pelosi’s are ill-gotten gains.
COINAGE FOR CONGRESS. In the post titled “Energy Independence Isolationism”, reader Steve protests my uncharacteristic choice of language for Congress members.
I responded by asking him what else would he have me call them? I have run out of adjectival niceties. Maybe readers have some, but I’m all out.
I’ve been in the trenches for over a decade, and have been pretty polite throughout. (Okay, in “Bush’s 16 Words Miss the Big Picture,” I likened Bush’s “Bring ‘Em On” grin to “the grimace on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis.”)
Have the Leaders returned the courtesy? Have they refrained, at the very least, from bloodletting and thieving and all other manner of immorality and dishonor? No.
To everything there is a season, it is written in Ecclesiastes. The time is ripe to call a F-ck Face a FF.
I’ll tell you what: I’ll change “Congressional Cockroaches” to “Congressional Creeps.” I was being grossly unfair to cockroaches.
Updated (June 24): Steve has forgiven me (although he posted his reply to the wrong post). He writes:
Ilana, touché. No need to pull punches. They are f-ck faces. Libertarian small-g goddess-hood intact. Now, I just have more than your intellect by which to be intimidated. My use of the f bomb tends to be more mundane and unimaginative, and almost universally traffic-related. Props!
Thanks for feeling my pain, Steve. I’m glad my fall from grace has been halted. As a first-time offender (scroll down), let me say in my defense that mitigating circumstances were–are–in abundance. Actually, believe it or not, christening Congress as I did was no “crime” of passion. I had thought of removing the risqué moniker, and then decided that the time was ripe to “Out [these] damned spots.”
Update II: Has anyone noticed that this is blog number 666? The Number of the Beast. Speaking of the Devil. (The Number of the Beast Iron-Maiden style is cool).
By the way, in case of a misunderstanding, the honorifics in this post apply, naturally, to members of both Houses (sans Ron Paul). A pox on both Houses.
What never fails to amaze me about the anointed Idiocracy of America (Peggy Noonan comes to mind here) is that, no matter how evil and erroneous their way, they always get curtain calls; they retain their status as philosopher-kings. Or queens.
Colonic Crusader” Katie Couric said this at an award ceremony for her cherished self:
“However you feel about her politics, I feel that Sen. Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I’ve ever seen.”
[Note the grating “I feel” locution]
Rewind to February this year:
Sly Katie recently interviewed Clinton while intoxicated—drunk with love for Obama. Couric’s below-the-belt barbs and blithe probes about Obama—but not the issues—made Hillary appear elevated by comparison. The Senator was courteous where Katie was cruel.
‘Someone told me your nickname in school was Miss Frigidaire. Is that true?’ Couric asked. ‘Only with some boys,’ Clinton said, laughing
The answer was quick, and, I must confess, classy. The question was base and bitchy. (It’s of a piece with another iconic ‘journalist’s’ cruelty—that of Barbara Walters. She prefaced an interview with Celine Dion by pronouncing: ‘you are not beautiful.’ Tears welled in Dion’s beautiful eyes.)
Excerpted from my “Militant Mama Obama.”
Business, Constitution, Democrats, Ethics, Justice, Law, Natural Law
(The title of the post is a tad unfair to Obama, I know. But editing The Harvard Law Review is clearly no litmus test for purity of intellect or ethics.)
One thing is for sure, Spitzer did not forge his political and fiscal fortunes by means of voluntary exchanges on the free market. The Spitzer piranha didn’t give law teeth; but used bad law to bite business to the bone.
Daniel Gross of Slate had this to say back in 2004:
Spitzer made maximum hay out of the “New York State’s Martin Act. The 1921 legislation, as Nicholas Thompson noted in this Legal Affairs piece, gives extraordinary powers and discretion to an attorney general fighting financial fraud. He can ‘subpoena any document he wants from anyone doing business in the state,’ make investigations secret or public at his whim, and ‘choose between filing civil or criminal charges whenever he wants.’ Extraordinarily, Thompson notes, ‘people called in for questioning during Martin Act investigations do not have a right to counsel or a right against self-incrimination. Combined, the act’s powers exceed those given any regulator in any other state.’”
Spitzer embodied abuse of power. As a government goon, he was an extortionist extraordinaire. “He didn’t simply indict. He issued press releases. When Spitzer published a press release detailing a shocking betrayal of trust by” this or the other “of Wall Street’s most trusted names,” the company would lose billions in market value in a matter of days and would quickly settle with the thug.
I know I’ve defended the naturally licit actions of scum such as Scooter Libby against naturally illicit prosecutions. And yes, I support the decriminalization of prostitution (but not its moral elevation). Yes again: I believe Spitzer’s funds are his to move about, and that his transactions were perfectly licit. So call me inconsistent on this count, but this character is so evil, contemptible, and uncontrollable (and nauseatingly hypocritical), I consider it a mitzvah that he has been removed from office and taken DOWN, if by unjust means.
I want to see Spitzer’s name live on in infamy; he ought to ultimately die disgraced, and if we lived under a just legal system, be prosecuted—but for his crimes against innocent members of the business community. Unfortunately—and I guess I’m nothing if not consistent—I’m with Alan Dershowitz on the following count: Spitzer ought not to be prosecuted for his moral failings. Although I’m filled with schadenfreude at the spectacle of Spitzer, there is no case to be made for his prosecution in libertarian law.
More later on Spitzer’s ho—or rather on the manner in which media have infantilized the girl and turned her into a victim.