About That New Era Of Bipartisanship

President Bush is partying like it's 2002:

Yesterday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) noted that President Bush plans to renominate several of his rejected judicial nominees:

"In the days following the election, the President spoke about becoming a uniter and working with Congress in a bipartisan way. Regrettably, it appears he will not be keeping that promise. I understand the President intends to renominate a number of controversial nominees. That unfortunate decision evidences that he intends to stay the partisan course when it comes to judicial nominations."

And it's not just judges. Bush renominated Kenneth Tomlinson as the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees government broadcasts like the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. Tomlinson, you'll recall, is the guy who hired outside agents to spy on PBS programs and check for "liberal bias" (because that PBS demo is so dangerously large), put friends on the government payroll, and used his office to bankroll a horse racing operation.

It's morning in America.

And when Bush didn't get all he wanted from the sycophantic Republican Congress on federal nominees, he'd just appoint them when Congress went into recess. That tactic has continued as well, as Bush named Dr. Erik Keroack as the head of the Office of Family Planning. This is a guy who believes things like this:

At the Annual Abstinence Leadership Conference in Kansas, Keroack defended abstinence (in an aptly titled talk, "If I Only Had a Brain") by claiming that sex causes people to go through oxytocin withdrawal which in turn prevents people from bonding in relationships. Seriously.

[Keroack] explained that oxytocin is released during positive social interaction, massage, hugs, "trust" encounters, and sexual intercourse. "It promotes bonding by reducing fear and anxiety in social settings, increasing trust and trustworthiness, reducing stress and pain, and decreasing social aggression," he said.

But apparently if you've had sex with too many people you use up all that oxytocin: "People who have misused their sexual faculty and become bonded to multiple persons will diminish the power of oxytocin to maintain a permanent bond with an individual." Hear that? Too many sexual partners and you'll never love again!

So the next time you hear some DC pundit talking about the spirit of bipartisanship and the nation coming together to solve the collective problems we face, just realize that they're spouting bullshit. The President's going to govern the way he's always tried to govern. He's going to try and bully his way through the last two years.