Elizabeth Edwards' Grace

Judging from the last couple days on the site, and the endless stream of diaries about how to properly imagine other people's opinions of cartoons, or how to properly eulogize a political opponent, I think it's more proper, actually, to recognize this editorial opinion from Elizabeth Edwards on the death of Tony Snow. Edwards and Snow are linked by virtue of being diagnosed with recurrences of their cancer within days of one another in 2007, and the news of his death clearly came to her as chilling and sad. In the article, Edwards reveals some universal, human truths, which often get lost in the clatter of political warfare, not limited to this site. I want to excerpt a bit:

Last week—when Tony was still alive and I was not so afraid—I rode my bicycle in a small Fourth of July parade at the beach to which we have gone for close to two decades. When I got to the celebration and stepped off the bicycle, an older man approached me. I hope you are doing well, he said, and then he added—oddly, it is more often the case that people do feel obliged to confess the gap between us—"although we don't agree on much of anything." I thanked him for his good wishes and then I added—as I often do—"and I suspect we agree on more than you think." He smiled, I smiled, and that was that. And then Tony died. And I thought more about the things on which we agree and the things on which we disagree. And as with my parade companion, I suspect Tony and I agreed on more things that we might have guessed.

We each chose to reach for something larger than the life and body with which we were saddled when we kept our course after the last diagnoses. We did it because we thought it was important and because (although it is chic to say that one detests politics) we actually loved the give and take it, the struggle to find what you think is right and the imperative to make others understand and agree. But what, in the end, does it tell us about what we each found to be really important? I am guessing it is not school vouchers or the expensing of stock options or class action lawsuits about salacious material in video games. It was that woman who stood with him years before and promised to love him in sickness and in health; it was those children, whose births marked the very best days of his life. And it isn't so different for any of us, is it? [...] Can't we start with something easy on which we can agree? That no one should die of a disease we can find and stop? And when we agree—and agree to do something about it—then we can move on toward those fault lines, like Tony, not taking no for an answer.

This may be too "post-partisan" a message for this venue - whatever that means - but it's pretty powerful. Once you understand that everybody has intimations of their own mortality, and that everybody knows someone in their family or their circle of friends who may be struggling with an illness or worse, you can see the perfect simplicity in Edwards' words.

My dad's in his fifth day of radiation treatments right now. He got the same type of cancer his father got, which is the same cancer his father's brother got, and I suspect it'll be the same cancer I'll get someday. There isn't an insurance agent, conservative activist or Republican politician alive who can tell me that they disagree with the imperative of keeping alive those who we have the ability to treat. It's an argument without a rebuttal, at least without one that is cruel or evil. And when we reach out, even to those political opponents, through common experience, and common cause - that's actually how we become a more progressive nation. We have a tremendous empathy deficit in America - the inability to stand in the shoes of our brothers and sisters. Edwards' expression of empathy is an object lesson.

When you face a conservative movement that is wholly dedicated to putting up roadblocks and turning off the spigot of empathy, making this a cruel and angry and paranoid and fearful nation, it can be hard not to fight back in the same manner. But I think, while engaging in the fight is fundamental to the survival of this democracy, occasionally we have to step back and recognize the human truths. Elizabeth Edwards is heroically battling on the front lines for reforming our broken health care system. But she hasn't forgotten that the issue goes beyond spreadsheets and mandates - it's about fathers dying young, sons without treatment for their ills, mothers who can't afford their pills. It's about healing. And you can only be on one side of that debate.

There's no calculation in these remarks. They are simply truths. It so happens that these truths, and the courage and bravery exhibited in saying them, are unquestionably progressive.

Tony Snow

has lost his battle with colon cancer. He was 53. We didn't agree at all politically, but by all accounts he was a nice man. When he resigned last year you could tell this was going to be a tough situation, and now we know. RIP.

The Truth About Those Liberal Fascists

Reading the screen caps of the jacket copy of Jonah Goldberg's lame-ass book, it's clear that conservatives really, REALLY don't like teachers.

The quintessential liberal fascist isn't an SS stormtrooper. It is a female grade-school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.

This is basically a non sequitur: "The real fascist isn't an iron-fisted despotic ruler, but a plumber with a drinking problem." But the stab at teachers is familiar. This weekend, Tony Snow told students at Old Dominion University that "The average Iranian is more pro-American than virtually any college faculty in this country." There's a real antipathy here.

These are the same faculty members, by the way, who came rushing to this Princeton student's aid when he claimed to have been a victim of a physical attack for trying to instill conservative values among undergrads on campus. In particular, Robert George, a jurisprudence professor, vigorously defended the student.

Turns out he made the whole thing up, and in fact inflicted the wounds upon himself. He made up a death threat against himself in high school, too. And here's the reality about the Princeton campus:

With an active Republicans Club, a pro-life club, three major Evangelical groups, and the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions that is led by Professor George, Princeton University is considered one of the Ivy League's more conservative campuses.

But it wasn't enough just to be the persecuted majority, the student had to feel like he was the hunted majority. And this professor played right into it.

Somehow, despite all this, it's educators on the LEFT described as belonging to hate groups, as liberal fascists, and as anti-American.

You figure it out.

The Red Queen's Last Day

Just at this moment, somehow or other, they began to run.

Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying 'Faster! Faster!', but Alice felt she could not go faster, though she had no breath left to say so.

The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. 'I wonder if all the things move along with us?' thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried 'Faster! Don't try to talk!'

Not that Alice had any idea of doing that. She felt as if she; would never be able to talk again, she was getting so much out of breath: and still the Queen cried 'Faster! Faster! 'and dragged her along. 'Are we nearly there?' Alice managed to pant out at last.

'Nearly there!' the Queen repeated. 'Why, we passed it ten minutes ago! Faster! And they ran on for a time in silence, with the wind whistling in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, she fancied.

'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.

The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little, now.'

Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'

'Of course it is,' said the Queen. 'What would you have it?'

'Well, in our country, said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time as we've been doing.' 'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, here, see. It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'

'I'd rather not try, please!' said Alice. 'I'm quite content to stay here - only I am so hot and thirsty!' 'I know what you'd like!' the Queen said good naturedly, taking a little box out of her pocket. 'Have a biscuit!'

Alice thought it would not be civil to say 'No,' though it wasn't at all what she wanted. So she took it, and ate it as well as she could: and it was very dry: and she thought she had never been so nearly choked in all her life.

'While you're refreshing yourself,' said the Queen, 'I'll just take the measurements' And she took a ribbon out of her pocket, marked in inches, and began measuring the ground, and sticking little pegs in here and there.

'At the end of two yards,' she said, putting in a peg to mark the distance, I shall give you your directions have another biscuit?' 'No, thank you,' said Alice: 'one's guite enough!' 'Thirst quenched, I hope!' said the Queen.

- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow's last day at work was Wednesday. How could we just let him slip out the wings without some sort of send-off? Particularly when he presented a master class in rhetorical obfuscation, complete with an array of comical expressions that would do a Borscht belt comedian proud.

Here are some of the answers Mr. Snow gave at the press gaggle. All the floating answers are in response to variants of this question: Are we in an open-ended commitment in Iraq?

Begin!

MR. SNOW: ... Well, you answer the charge by pointing to General Petraeus's testimony. It's pretty clear that it is not a war without end. As a matter of fact, it is a war that actually has victory as its aim. And victory is defined as helping the Iraqis develop the capability of defending themselves and governing themselves.

[snip]

MR. SNOW: ... So I think in order to try to caricature it as a war without end is simply to ignore two days of testimony, including 11 hours yesterday in front of the United States Senate. It's just not true.

But on the other hand, to say that you don't know when a war is going to end doesn't mean that you don't think it's going to end.

[snip]

MR. SNOW: ... The whole -- what General Petraeus is saying is that you are able to move forces out as a result of success, not simply -- this is not an exercise to get to a number.

[snip]

MR. SNOW: ... Now, in terms of -- I think what you're trying to do is to develop a narrative that says, well, you know what he's really trying to do is he's trying to put lipstick on this thing because he was going to have to remove the troops anyway. Is that what you're -- is that the buried insinuation?

Q I didn't use the lipstick analogy, but you just did. So it seems --

MR. SNOW: No, but is that kind of the thesis here?

Q No, the question is that Army officials have already said publicly that, in fact, you're going to have retention issues, you have rotation issues and that by next spring/next summer you're going to have to start bringing some troops home or you're going to have -- if, God forbid, there's another situation in another part of the world you might not have enough troops. So how can you say the reason why you're potentially pulling out up to 30,000 troops is because you're having so much success on the ground when, in fact, it's because you have to pull them out anyway?

MR. SNOW: No, wrong. You don't have to pull them out. And General Petraeus has made it clear -- see, what you're doing is you're taking unrelated testimony and you're trying to draft it and you're saying, you guys will leave because you have to. Wrong. General Petraeus has made it clear that he -- by the way, this is not a guy who's simply going to try to fake it. His career, his reputation, his honor are on the line. And this is a man who makes decisions based on what he thinks is going to work. And therefore, he will continue to do so.

And in this particular case he is talking about potential drawdowns next year based on conditions on the ground, and they will continue to do so. I will let -- you know, you can take quotes from various generals about --

[snip]

MR. SNOW: ... Again, the strategy that General Petraeus is pursuing is one that is designed to produce results and to produce the kind of stability that the Iraqi people deserve. It is not one that is gauged at numbers.

[snip]

MR. SNOW: ... Number one, you don't know when the war is going to end because you don't know when the war is going to end -- you don't have a crystal ball. I mean, you could have asked Eisenhower when the war was going to end and he wouldn't have known. You could have asked generals and -- the fact is, you just --

[snip]

MR. SNOW: No. Look, benchmarks were something that Congress wanted to use as a metric --

Q You signed off on it.

MR. SNOW: -- and we're going to produce a report. But the fact is that the situation is bigger and more complex, and you need to look at the whole picture.

[snip]

Q Tony, when the President addresses the nation in the way that he will tomorrow night, it often sets lots of expectations on the part of the public. Is there a concern that with so much discussion about potential for drawing down troops, if there is not the kind of progress on the ground that you foresee, that that will simply be an expectation unfulfilled?

MR. SNOW: No, we tend not to go into these with failure narratives in mind. No, what the President is going to do is he's going to outline what he thinks is the sensible way to proceed in Iraq, based on the facts on the ground and based on developments.

[snip]

MR. SNOW: You know what really strikes me is that there seems to be this attempt to go after General Petraeus in every possible way so that there can be an avoidance of the fact that his strategy is succeeding.

This new line of argument that -- where you're just going back to the same numbers, it was -- you've got to assume that when you have a surge and the number goes up, they are going to go down, and at some point you will reach the level you were at before. And they may continue to go down. I'm going to let the President make whatever announcements he has to make. ...

So I think what's going on is that there is an attempt to create a cause to get you to ask about numbers, rather than results. But the fact is, the numbers will reflect realities on the ground. The realities on the ground, at least according to General Petraeus, seem to be such that you can start drawing down numbers.

[snip]

MR. SNOW: ... I've got to tell you, this is an amazing canard in the sense that you have shifting realities at all times, and you respond to changing facts on the ground. The idea that you have an unchanging strategy -- only a crazy person would fail to adjust strategy on a regular basis based on the realities on the ground.

Similarly -- it's interesting, because Democrats have said, we want a change in mission -- and there does seem, at least on the part of what General Petraeus was talking about, a change in mission -- they immediately try to inoculate against that argument by saying it's not, but it is.

[snip]

Q A lot of people are dying.

MR. SNOW: Because there are bad guys that are out there, Helen, and they don't want to go away.

[snip]

Q Tony, back to Iraq. Regardless of what the President says tomorrow night, the funding debate is going to continue next week on the Hill. You spoke earlier about benchmarks and said, well, they really don't show the whole picture. Does he still accept that he needs a report on benchmarks, and really do something --

MR. SNOW: Yes, it's the law. Of course he's going to do it.

Q So next spring? In other words --

MR. SNOW: Well, we've got a benchmark report due Saturday.

Q Understood. Will they continue to follow that as the condition for getting the funding that --

MR. SNOW: Well, look, I think a condition for getting the funding is trying to figure out where the strategy is working. I think if you try to -- lash yourself to the benchmarks, you get -- as General Petraeus was pointing out, you could achieve every one of those benchmarks and not be succeeding. So I think what you need to do is take a broad view. They certainly provided valuable input, and that will continue to be a source for people to look at.

Q Are they relevant?

Q Tony, if --

MR. SNOW: I'm sorry, what?

Q Are they relevant then?

MR. SNOW: Not necessarily relevant -- look, number one, it's the law, we're going to abide by it; members of Congress will have to decide how relevant they are. Some of them are -- I mean, as you noted in the first report, some of them not particularly, but it's still -- any inputs you can get to get a fuller appreciation of what's actually going on is helpful.

[snip]

Q If the troop numbers are based on the reality on the ground, if basically they're based on need, isn't that really the definition of an open-ended commitment, because the reality may not get better, may not get much better. Isn't that really -- doesn't that define an open-ended commitment?

MR. SNOW: If you take a look at the trend lines we have seen, I'm afraid -- I'm happy to report that your hypothesis doesn't hold. What you have seen is a significant degradation not only in the strength, but also in the public view of al Qaeda in Iraq. It has lost what prestige it may have had, and it now has Iraqis openly going after it. So I would contend that what you're trying to do is to set up a scenario that itself flies in the face of the facts that have been accumulating in Iraq over the last six months.

Q If we looked at trend lines -- for the 2000 election we'd have a President Gore. (Laughter.) I mean, trend lines change, and so the fact is, you don't know exactly what the reality on the ground is going to be, and if you're basing the number of troops on that, then it's an open-ended commitment.

MR. SNOW: That is the most -- look, all right, I give up. I give up. --

I'm outta here.

Snow's Greatest Hits

Responding to the announcement of Snowjob's departure, Salon's Tim Grieve takes us on a stroll down memory lane. Herewith, a sample of Snow's bons mots:

June 15, 2006: Asked if the White House has any comment on the 2,500th U.S. fatality in Iraq, Snow says: "It's a number, and every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks people want something."

Sept. 9, 2006: Six days after the president says, "We will stay the course" in Iraq, Snow says, "The idea that somehow we're staying the course is just wrong. It is absolutely wrong."

Feb. 15, 2007: Snow on what went wrong in prewar planning for Iraq: "I'm not sure anything went wrong."

March 1, 2007: Snow responds to reports that two U.S. combat brigades will "surge" into Iraq without undergoing the usual counterinsurgency training in California's Mojave Desert first: "Well, but they can get desert training elsewhere, like in Iraq."

March 19, 2007: Snow tells reporters that the Democrats' plan for Iraq represents a "recipe for defeat." When CNN's Ed Henry asks Snow to describe the White House's "recipe for success," Snow asks Henry what his "recipe for success is." When Henry says that winning the war in Iraq isn't exactly in his job description, Snow tells him to "Zip it."

June 14, 2007: Asked if any member of the Bush family is serving in the war on terrorism, Snow responds: "Yes, the president. The president is in the war every day." Reporter: "On the front lines, wherever?" Snow: "The president."

Someday, when Iraq is a really distant memory, this will all be funny.

Unless we're in a war with Iran then.

Or Syria.

Or...

Snowed Out

Tony Snow made it official, he'll be stepping down in two weeks. I can't believe that the traditional media is going with this story that it's for financial reasons. The guy made millions for a decade on Fox News, and as a former White House press secretary he can ride the wingnut welfare train for tens of thousands of dollars per speaking appearance.

No, the real reason is clearly the grind of the job for someone undergoing chemotherapy. He didn't look that well today, and I don't understand why that's hard to say. He's battling cancer and he needs to pay attention to that. No need for a cover story.

I wish him well in his battle against the disease. It's fitting that this week saw the Lance Armstrong Livestrong Cancer Forum. Tony Snow could do something very positive by coming forward and giving more attention to something that affects practically every American, either personally or through a friend or family member.

The $168,000 Poorhouse

I thought the same thing as Atrios when I heard Tony Snow's admission that he'd have to resign because he can't afford to stay as Press Secretary. It may be a government job, but doesn't the Press Secretary at the White House make a lot of money?

The answer is yes, he makes $168,000 a year, as much as any senior staffer in the executive branch.

But I think there's a teachable moment here. There's only one reason that a man making $168,000 a year would have to leave his job to look for something higher-paying; it's because he has catastrophic medical bills. If someone making that much per year can't keep up with his medical payments, especially when he has the best coverage money can buy, then we truly have a crisis in our health care system.

(adding, he probably doesn't have to pay much of anything for his medical care, being a cabinet official the government sucks up the cost, so more likely it's just one man being impossibly greedy, so let him come out and say that, and in so doing defend a government-run, government-administered health care program. See what I'm getting at here?)

UPDATE: Good question by this commenter:

I understand Tony Snow’s health is a prime consideration. But “when my money run’s out”? Is it that his health insurance benefits as an employee of the President don’t cover his pre-existing condition?

That would just be priceless...

UPDATE: I think it's legitimate to wonder if Tony Snow was denied coverage from his employer due to the risk of his recurring cancer. Now, HIPAA does provide protections for patients with pre-existing conditions.

HIPAA limits the time you can be denied coverage for a preexisting condition under your employer's health insurance plan. Under HIPAA, an employer health insurance plan can deny coverage for a preexisting condition only if the employee or dependent is diagnosed, receives care or treatment, or has care or treatment recommended in the 6 months before the enrollment date. Note: Pregnancy cannot be denied as a preexisting condition by an employer's insurer. In addition, preexisting conditions cannot be applied to newborns, adopted children under age 18 or a child under age 18 placed for adoption as long as the child become covered under the health plan within 30 days of birth, adoption or placement for adoption, and provided the child does not incur a subsequent 63-day or longer break in coverage.

The length of time coverage can be denied for a preexisting condition under HIPAA is limited to no longer than 12 months (18 months if you are a late enrollee). This time can be reduced or eliminated if you were covered by previous health insurance (which qualifies under HIPAA as creditable coverage) and if there was not a break in coverage between the plans of 63 days or more.

Snow took the job on April 26, 2006. He revealed his cancer recurrence on March 27, 2007. Press reports at the time state that he had beaten colon cancer two years prior, in February of 2005. So if he was still receiving treatment in November of 2005, he could under the law be denied coverage, depending on the enrollment date.

Now look at this quote from Dana Perino, which is a little obtuse:

Snow is ensured the best treatment, at a hospital he wished not to disclose. "Tony Snow is paid the salary that he's paid, and he has health insurance," said Dana Perino, filling in for him at the White House. "And I'm sure he's taken care of that way."

Note that she says he "has health insurance." It's a funny way of describing it, as if it were separate from the employment, no?

It would be the height of crassness for the White House's health care administrator to deny coverage to Tony Snow. But what other explanation can their be for his fear that he would "run out of money" if he continued in a $168,000 a year job?

Today in Libby Spin

So I thought I'd accumulate some of the most egregious Scooter Libby commutation spin and turn it into a big long post.

Tony Snow actually took to the venerable USA Today op-ed page, and in between the brightly-colored graphs served up a melange of rationalizations and justifications:

The Constitution gives the president the power to grant clemency in a wide range of cases, at his discretion, with no restrictions. In the final hours of the Clinton administration, this unfettered authority was embodied in a mad rush to push through pardons with dizzying haste — 141 grants on Clinton's final day in office, part of 211 in the final nine weeks.

In contrast, no president in recent history has made more careful use of the pardoning power than George W. Bush: The president believes pardons and commutations should reflect a genuine determination to strengthen the rule of law and increase public faith in government.

We're allowed, and anyway Clinton abused it too, but we abused the clemency power in such a way that RESPECTED the rule of law. That's just bogus. In one account of the deliberations over the commutation, Bush's team appeared to be re-trying the case by weighing the evidence. There can be no greater disrespect of the independent judiciary than this. And we can go over all of the times in Texas when Bush didn't lift a finger to help those convicts who were mentally retarded, or those whose lawyers slept through their trials.

As for the "Clinton did it" part, there was more of this today.

The White House on Thursday made fun of former President Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for criticizing President Bush's decision to erase the prison sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

"I don't know what Arkansan is for chutzpah, but this is a gigantic case of it," presidential spokesman Tony Snow said [...]

In the closing hours of his presidency, Clinton pardoned 140 people, including fugitive financier Marc Rich.

Marc Rich was REPRESENTED by Scooter Libby, and Libby made a cool couple million defending him, money that in part went to his fine today. If you have a problem with the pardoning of Marc Rich, go ask Scooter Libby if he was guilty as sin.

In addition, nobody that Bill Clinton pardoned had the goods on him. In other words, he wasn't continuing to obstruct justice by commuting a sentence, as Al Gore says best:

Former Vice President Al Gore said he found the Bush decision "disappointing" and said he did not think it was comparable to Clinton's pardons.

"It's different because in this case the person involved is charged with activities that involved knowledge of what his superiors in the White House did," Gore said on NBC's "Today" show Thursday.

You can also go back and look at Bush I's pardons of everyone connected to the Iran-Contra Affair, all of whom ALSO had information on the President himself, and realize that this is a family tradition of backscratching in exchange for silence.

In a twist on the "Clinton did it" sub-genre, radio talker Neal Boortz outright lied and claimed that Clinton was also convicted of perjury just like Libby (and as such deserved no jail time, right?):

BOORTZ: But in the case of Scooter Libby, Scooter Libby and Bill Clinton got sentenced and convicted for exactly the same crime. Can you -- now tell me, why is there so much outrage on the left that Scooter Libby isn't going to have to serve a 30-month jail term, and not a bit of outrage on the left that Bill Clinton didn't even get a 30-month jail term.

CALLER: I don't remember Bill Clinton actually being convicted for perjury.

BOORTZ: I'm sorry, he was.

CALLER: He was exonerated by a Republican Senate if I remember correctly.

The caller was, um, right.

Alan Dershowitz, one of the lawyers who filed a brief on Libby's behalf that Judge Walton famously said "wouldn't pass the muster of a first-year law student," predictably got angry at the judge for failing to recognize his brilliance:

Dershowitz:

The trial judge too acted politically, when he imposed the harshly excessive sentence on Libby, virtually provoking the president into commuting it.

As several readers who commented on Dershowitz's brief pointed out, not only was the judge who sentenced Libby--and denied him bail pending appeal--a Republican nominee, but so were two of the three Appeals Court judges who sustained that decision [...]

The Dershowitz Rule: Those who disagree with Alan Dershowitz are political.

Rudy Giuliani didn't really try to spin the White House's decision, simply calling it "reasonable", despite railing against at least one particular perjury sentencing when he was a federal prosecutor:

The United States Attorney in Manhattan, Rudolph W. Giuliani, declared yesterday that the one-year prison sentence that a Queens judge received for perjury was "somewhat shocking."

"A sentence of one year seemed to me to be very lenient," Mr. Giuliani said, when asked to comment on the sentence imposed Wednesday on Justice Francis X. Smith, the former Queens administrative judge.

And finally, there's in-over-his-head "I didn't think we'd have any tough questions over Fourth of July break" deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel, who first couldn't argue his way out of the most obvious spin-puncturing question:

Q Scott, why, if the President thought the sentence was excessive, why didn't he simply reduce it? Why do away with the entire sentence?

MR. STANZEL: Well, I think the President thought that the penalty -- the fine, the probation, the felony charge -- were all very significant penalties. And so that's why -- I'm not going to get into a gaming out of whether zero to 30 and somewhere in there was -- is the right place, but the President thought that the fine was excessive -- or the jail time was excessive, and that's why he commuted the sentence.

Q Even one day would have been considered excessive?

MR. STANZEL: The President commuted the entire sentence.

Q So a single day in jail for lying and obstructing justice, in a federal case, is excessive?

MR. STANZEL: The President believed that 30 months, the sentence that was given -- one day wasn't given, 30 months was.

Q Right, but it's not the 30 months that he thought was excessive, it was the entire sentence.

MR. STANZEL: It was the --

Q -- any time in jail.

It reminds me of that Kids in the Hall episode where the customer is haggling with the sales clerk, and the sales clerk keeps saying "$500" and the customer thinks about it, and goes, "No dollars." The all-or-nothing aspect of this makes plain that this was a makedly political act.

Then there's this gem.

Q Scott, is Scooter Libby getting more than equal justice under the law? Is he getting special treatment?

MR. STANZEL: Well, I guess I don't know what you mean by "equal justice under the law."

Epitaph for an Administration. They don't know what "equal justice under the law means.

FOOTNOTE: I will add that at least one Republican didn't check his "law and order" bona fides at the door when it comes to this case.

So far, however, only one congressional Republican from Florida, Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Palm Harbor, has publicly broken with party leaders and the president, saying Bush's decision was wrong. Most of the others have just kept mum.

"Mr. Libby was tried by a jury of his peers and was convicted of a felony, " Bilirakis said in a statement. "The fact that Mr. Libby committed this crime while serving as a public official makes it all the more egregious. Excessive or not, Mr. Libby's sentence should be respected."

Let's Not Forget Who This Is About

(cartoon courtesy Dave the Rave)

Since the Libby commutation broke, the attention has been placed on the President's mendaciousness, his double standards for people like Karla Faye Tucker, his previous statements about the role of the executive in sentencing changes, how this puts Bush on better footing with his base, and on and on.

Did everybody simply forget the events of last week? The Washington Post laid out in meticulous detail that the President is an empty suit, and that anything truly odious sanctioned in the White House is really managed by the Office of the Vice President. Indeed, the Libby commutation would be the most obvious evidence of Fourthbranch's hand, considering that Libby was his chief of staff. And Tony Snow found it impossible to deny queries about whether Fourthbranch was involved in the deliberations:

In a White House press conference on Tuesday morning, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow appeared to suggest that Vice President Dick Cheney's views may have been considered by President George W. Bush as he deliberated on whether to commute or pardon the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

"Everybody had an opportunity to share their views," Snow said in the Tuesday morning press conference.

Snow later clouded up his statement that the Vice President had been involved in the deliberations.

"I'm sure that the Vice President may have expressed an opinion," Snow said, then adding. "He may have recused himself, I honestly don't know."

And yet Page 1 of the Washington Post this morning describes the decision as one "made largely alone," which is probably correct, if you mean only by Cheney.

President Bush limited his deliberations over commuting the prison term of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to a few close aides, opting not to consult with the Justice Department and rebuffing efforts by friends to lobby on Libby's behalf, administration officials and people close to Bush said yesterday.

"We were all told to stay away from it," said an old Bush friend from Texas who is close to Libby and would not speak for attribution. "When we called over there, they said the president is well aware of the situation, so don't raise it. None of us lobbied him because they told us not to."

For the first time in his presidency, Bush commuted a sentence without running requests through lawyers at the Justice Department, White House officials said. He also did not ask the chief prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, for his input, as routinely happens in cases routed through the Justice Department's pardon attorney.

So the Vice President "may have expressed an opinion," but everybody else was told not to say a word. To be fair, that does mean that Bush received advice from both the executive and the legislative branches, all in one person!

We all know what's going on here. While both Bush and Fourthbranch are exposed to real culpability in leaking Valerie Plame's identity and mishandling classified information if Libby ever flipped, clearly Fourthbranch is more exposed. Patrick Fitzgerald alluded to this specifically during the trial by stating outright that there is a cloud over the Vice Presidency. This commutation is simply obstruction of justice to cover up other obstruction of justice. And from the very beginning, Fourthbranch has been the most involved in the leaking of classified information, the most involved in exacting revenge from Joe Wilson for undercutting his case for war, and the most involved in outright lying in the run-up to war. So the fingerprints are big enough that you don't need CSI to come in with their equipment.

This travesty of justice demands more scrutiny be put on Fourthbranch, not Bush. Without Fourthbranch, Bush would be convening panels to tell him how history will vindicate him and surveying the pictures of past Presidents to see if he was more handsome (as James Buchanan did. Buchanan also thought history would treat him favorably. It's the last refuge of a Presidential scoundrel). No, the proper Constitutional remedy right now is HR 333, calling for the removal of the Vice President, so that this man can be held to account for his personal assault on the very fabric of American democracy. It may not succeed, but to those who represent us in Washington, who took an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, there is no recourse. In closing, here's John Dean:

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a law that Cheney believes does apply to him, whether that law be major or minor. For example, he has claimed that most of the laws passed in the aftermath of Watergate were unconstitutional, and thus implicitly inapplicable. His office oversees signing statements claiming countless new laws will not be honored except insofar as the President's extremely narrow interpretation allows. He does not believe the War Powers Act should be honored by the President. Nor, in his view, should the President be bothered with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In fact, it appears Cheney has actively encouraged defiance of such laws by the Bush Administration

For Cheney, the Geneva Conventions - considered among the nation's most important treaties -- are but quaint relics that can be ignored. Thus, he publicly embraced their violation when, on an Idaho talk radio program, he said he was not troubled in the slightest by our forces using "waterboarding" -- the simulated drowning of detainees to force them to talk. There are serious questions as to whether Cheney himself has also conspired to violate the War Crimes Act, which can be a capital crime.

A man who can so easily disregard the War Powers Act, FISA, the Geneva Conventions, and the War Crimes Act is merely flicking fleas when it comes to complying with laws like the Presidential Records Act, which requires him to keep records [...]

Those with whom I have spoken have serious doubt that Bush and the White House staff really knows what Cheney is doing, why he is doing it, or how he is doing it. From the outset of this administration, Cheney has been instrumental in placing people loyal to him throughout the Executive Branch. This is not to say that Bush is not "the decider," for he is, but by shaping the debate and controlling the paper flow, Cheney decides what the decider will decide.

It has long been apparent that Cheney's genius is that he lets George W. Bush get out of bed every morning actually believing he is the President. In fact, his presidency is run by the President of the Senate, for Cheney is its true center of gravity. That fact has become more apparent with every passing year of this presidency, and anyone who thinks otherwise has truly "misunderestimated" our nominal president and his vice president.

How Do I Lie? Let Me Count The Ways...

A brief sampling of Bush Administration lies over the past few days...

• Laura Bush sez many Iraqi refugees have been welcomed to the United States. If by "many," you mean less than 500 out of the nearly two million Iraqis who have fled their country.

• General David Petraeus completely focuses on Al Qaeda in Iraq as the source of the problems in Iraq, when they are maybe 3% of the overall insurgency. He's also claiming that the September date is not a deadline for a policy change, when it is to the Congress, who actually has the ability to make that determination and not some general.

• Former deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty just wasn't all that involved in the firing of US Attorneys or the hiring of replacements, or really anything in the Justice Department, so I'm not sure how he spent his time. Of course, the Attorney General has said that he relied on McNulty's advice in approving the firings.

• Tony Snow responded to the scandal of White House officials using RNC email accounts in violation of the Presidential Records Act by saying "Clinton did it too," which is, um, not true. It's so untrue, in fact, that then-staffer John Podesta wrote a specific memo stating that all email must be incorporated into the official records system.

To be fair, not every Bush Administration official lies. Some of them don't say anything at all.

John A. Rizzo, who has spent much of the past five years honing the CIA's interrogation policies, knows how to avoid answering questions under pressure -- at least in public. In nearly two hours of Senate testimony yesterday, his longest response by far was six sentences long.

For much of the session, Rizzo confined himself to "Yes, sir," "No, sir" and "I think I'd best address that in closed session." [...]

Asked if he approved of a Justice Department opinion that only pain resulting in "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" qualified as torture, Rizzo carefully said he "did not object." Perhaps it "did appear overbroad," he added, "but I can't say that I had any specific objections to any specific parts of it."

He may be the best Administration official yet, because he tries really really hard NOT to lie.

Blaming the Victims

In 2005, you saw the Bush Administration blaming Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana for her performance during Hurricane Katrina, while at the same time they were criminally negligent in providing federal assistance. Now they're trying the same thing in Kansas.

The White House fought back Tuesday against criticism from Kansas’ governor that National Guard deployments to Iraq are slowing the response to last week’s devastating tornado.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the fault was Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’.

In a spat reminiscent of White House finger-pointing at Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco after the federal government’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina, Snow rapped Sebelius for not following procedure to find gaps and then asking the federal government to fill them.

“If you don’t request it, you’re not going to get it,” he said.

That's one of those, whaddyacallit, um... damn lies. And Sebelius has a lot of support in Kansas, so I don't think this one's going to work.

* Dec. 30, 2005: Sebelius writes to Rumsfeld requesting new equipment. “The Guard was critical to responding to recent blizzards and floods in Kansas, yet its ability to respond to similar situations is being diminished by a lack of equipment,” wrote Sebelius. Included with her letter was a list of equipment Kansas had lost to the Iraq war. [Kansas City Star, 1/21/06; Topeka Capital-Journal, 6/29/06]

* Jan. 23, 2006: Sebelius personally urges Bush to increase National Guard funding. In an one-hour motorcade ride in Kansas with Bush, Sebelius expressed concern about “a reduction of National Guard troop strength in its next budget.” Bush assured her he was “dealing” with the shortages. [Topeka Capital-Journal, 1/24/06; Kansas City Star, 3/11/06]

* June 28, 2006: Sebelius sends Army Secretary list of equipment lost in war. In a meeting with Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey, Sebelius told Harvey that the state had lost about $140 million in National Guard equipment to the Iraq war. Her office then sent him a list of the lost equipment. [Topeka Capital-Journal, 6/29/06]

* Sept. 5, 2006: Sebelius lobbies for replacement of National Guard equipment sent to Iraq. “Kansas’ congressional delegation, Sebelius and governors from around the country have been lobbying the Pentagon for increased funding to replace National Guard equipment that has been left in Iraq or damaged beyond repair after repeated use in war.” [AP, 9/5/06]

* Feb. 27, 2007: Sebelius pushes White House and Congress for more funding. “Now the Guard needs Washington’s help,” Sebelius said in press conference on Capitol Hill. “The President and Congress need to step up to the plate and give our Guard members the support they deserve.” [Press Release, 2/27/07]

Apparently this wasn't filed in triplicate on the proper T&S report, that's Snow's excuse for blatantly stretching the truth.

This is extremely simple. National Guard equipment belongs in the states, and doesn't need to be asked for. When disaster strikes, and it strikes unpredictably because it's a disaster, that equipment is needed immediately. It's not a situation that you can remedy with a formal request. The states need their own disaster preparedness program immediately. It's thuddingly stupid to suggest that a Governor didn't ask for anything so it's her fault for not being able to clean up after a natural disaster.

Mahablog has more.

Rewarding Bad Behavior

Apparently, Condi Rice hates America.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said her meeting with the Syrian foreign minister, the first high-level talks in years between the United States and Syria, was "professional" and focused on how to improve security in Iraq.

Rice met with Walid Moallem for a half-hour on the sidelines of a two-day conference about Iraq's future, taking the opportunity to air U.S. concerns about Syria's notoriously porous border with its neighbor.

"I didn't lecture him and he didn't lecture me," Rice said afterward. "I would say it was professional. It was businesslike."

Rice obviously doesn't understand the nature of the threat we face. She's a traitor to her country for rewarding bad behavior by the Syrian government. How dare she talk to our enemies. Condi Rice should be prosecuted under whatever law we can find for subverting our foreign policy.

Oh wait, that's Nancy Pelosi.

(By the way, Tony Snow is bobbing and weaving like crazy on this issue at the press briefing today.)

Snow on Edwards

"As somebody who has been through this,'' Snow said, "Elizabeth Edwards is setting a powerful example for a lot of people, and a good and positive one. She has been on top of diagnosis and follow-up. When you have cancer it's very important to keep checking. She's being aggressive. She's living an active life. And a positive attitude, prayers, and people you love are always a very good addition to any kind of medicine you have. So for Elizabeth Edwards, good going; our prayers are with you.''

Tony Snow had the benefit of experience to see clearly that you don't have to crawl into a corner and hide from the world because you get sick. Now Snow has had a recurrence of cancer and I hope to see him at the podium just as long as he is able. We have a deviant relationship to sickness in this country, even though it eventually affects all of us; we seem to think that our life-force will be drained away if we come in contact with an ill person. We want them to hide like we want all of our problems to hide, to go out of sight so that they're also out of mind. The sick should not be forced to be entombed before their time, and the so-called healthy need to get over their sickness aversion.

Ezra Klein wrote a piece for the New York Sun that was about Elizabeth Edwards, but it applies here as well.

Americans have a strange relationship with illness. It was shocking when Mr. Edwards forthrightly said that Elizabeth's cancer was treatable, but not curable. In other words, it will kill her.

That is, dare I say it, un-American. In this country, we make people better, or they die while we're trying. Illness is something you fight, not something you stall. And so we are not used to accepting it as a constant presence. The sick retreat to sanctums and hospital wards to do battle with their ailments, and they either emerge or they do not.

That, it seems, is what many wanted the Edwards family to do. I received countless e-mails arguing that he should have dropped out and wondering if, given the early support expressed for his projected decision to withdraw, there would be a backlash against his choice to continue on. Such questions ask more than they realize. They ask that the Edwardses allow the cancer to force them off life's stage. They ask that they accept death for Elizabeth before it has been decreed [...]

Mrs. Edwards's sickness scares us, and we do not want to be faced with it. That something is killing her reminds us all that we are dying, as are our loved ones. But we soldier on, and live on, and continue trying to change the world and make our dreams manifest. The Edwardses deserve the chance to do the same. They don't deserve special consideration while they're doing it. But that is not what they are asking for.

For the record I thought Katie Couric's performance with the Edwardses on 60 Minutes was somewhat regrettable, but it also gave them the stage to amplify these views. And I hope that these dual events will show to everyone the importance of cancer research and how we need to put the full force of the medical community to stop this disease in its tracks.

Cancer Knows No Party, and Neither Does Blue Cross of CA

Elizabeth Edwards' acknowledgement of the recurrence of her breast cancer (which I hope is not more serious than the Edwardses made it out to be, but which I fear is) was but one story of cancer attacking prominent political figures. Tony Snow will have surgery for a small growth under his abdomen; he had colon cancer two years ago, so we hope that it's nothing more serious. And most tragically, conservative commentator and blogger Catherine Siepp succumbed to lung cancer. Cancer is not a disease that picks between political affiliations for who it afflicts, that much is clear. And so a problem affecting everyone must be solved with a universal solution.

Before she died, Catherine Siepp wrote about her experiences with Blue Cross of California. It was a bit shocking to hear a committed conservative talking about the failures of our health care system in such a frank and direct manner, but when a health insurance conglomerate acts so dishonestly, anyone in that position would be offended regardless of their politics.

By law, insurance companies aren't allowed to adjust your monthly premiums just because you get sick. But they can raise the out-of-pocket cap for all of their members anytime they like, which amounts to the same thing because it affects only the unvalued sick members. (And, of course, getting sick means that even while one's medical costs go up, the ability to pay goes down -- earnings potential is curbed when life becomes a series of treatment appointments.)

Lucky you, if you don't know what your out-of-pocket cap is. And if you're like every single healthy person I've queried, you probably don't. But you should know, because the out-of-pocket cap is the most important part of your policy, meant to stave off financial disaster in case of catastrophic medical expenses [...]

Another thing working in insurance companies' favor is that cancer patients rarely have the energy to argue about such nickel-and-diming. I recently managed to spend a morning forcing my way through multiple disconnects and transfers on the Blue Cross 800 number, but I was eventually told that the company would probably reimburse me for the extra $90 a month I was paying for that weekly anti-nausea drug if I filled out the right forms. My far bigger worry is that out-of-pocket cap, which is essentially what insurance is for. To drastically raise it seems the definition of bad faith.

Or so I thought -- until I began getting letters from Blue Cross in February announcing that it was retroactively disallowing the anti-cancer drug Avastin treatments it had been paying for since October, at $5,000 a pop every other week. It seems Blue Cross decided this new and expensive targeted therapy is experimental. (It looks as if Blue Cross is not asking to be repaid for my relatively unexperimental chemo, which had been costing about $2,500 every single week, but who knows?)

To decide after a therapy has proved beneficial that it's merely "investigational" and therefore should not be covered -- that, actually, seems the definition of bad faith.

Today, the LA Times reported that Blue Cross of CA is being fined a million dollars for illegally dropping the policies of sick clients for trumped-up reasons. Recission is harsher, but generally of a piece with what Siepp had to put up with near the end of her life. That fine is embarrassingly low (they made three billion last year) and won't make a dent in Blue Cross' policies. But at least the state of California has publicly stated that this health insurer is motivated solely by greed and will gladly let their customers suffer rather than carry out their responsibilities. As an individual policyholder with Blue Cross, exactly the profile that they dishonestly drop as a matter of routine, this scares the heck out of me.

I am truly sorry for Catherine Siepp and her family, along with any other family out there who has had to deal with the scourge of cancer. We need to ensure that these families get the best medical attention and all the support they need; it ought to be an inalienable right of this country not to have to suffer due to some corporate balance sheet. The current insurance system will never get us to such a goal.

Prosecutor Purge Update

I'm a little disappointed that my moniker of "Iglesiasgate" didn't take off - put then, the US Attorney scandal ended up moving past just David Iglesias, so it was not in the cards. But nevertheless, I'll soldier on and report developments in the scandal:

• Three of the fired prosecutors - David Iglesias, Carol Lam, and Paul Charlton - were ranked in the top 10 of all US Attorneys in number of convictions. Not surprisingly, these are arguably the three most controversial firings.

• While the Senate approved subpoenas for Karl Rove and other White House officials, Patrick Leahy has just about nailed down Kyle Sampson to voluntarily testify next week. This would be a very big hearing to follow, because Sampson is none too happy with being made the fall guy by the Justice Department. I would imagine he will lash out if given the opportunity. Chuck Schumer gave a preview of this last Sunday on Meet The Press, so it's not a big surprise.

• The D-Trip has run its first ad of 2008, and it's about Iglesiasgate, slamming Rep. Heather Wilson for her role in calling Iglesias and pressuring him to indict local Democrats before Election Day. There's plenty of time, but my sense is that Wilson is toast next year.

• One interesting thing about this scandal is how it has highlighted the continuing politicization of the Justice Department under Bush. These things were all happening in an obvious fashion anyway, but seeing that the DoJ would fire prosecutors who wouldn't play ball has put this in stark relief. And it's allowed journalists to view the DoJ's activities through this frame. There's the mysterious downgrading of the landmark class action lawsuit against tobacco companies, where the cash award sought suddenly went from $130 billion to $10 billion. And there's federal prosecutors seeking to reduce Jack Abramoff's prison sentence because of his cooperation with ongoing corruption cases, allegedly. The Abramoff story is the perfect example, because normally that wouldn't raise an eyebrow at all. If someone's being that cooperative, you tend to give leniency. But if and when nothing comes from his "assistance," then you know that the DoJ was giving a political favor instead of tracking down further corruption. And frankly, they don't get the benefit of the doubt anymore.

• Great writing about PurgeGate: Josh Marshall:

Okay, enough. The president fired US Attorneys to stymie investigations of Republicans and punish US Attorneys who didn't harass Democrats with bogus voter fraud prosecutions. In the former instance, the evidence remains circumstantial. But in the latter the evidence is clear, overwhelming and undeniable.

Indeed, it is so undeniable the president hismelf does not deny it [...]

Back up a bit from the sparks flying over executive privilege and congressional testimony and you realize that these are textbook cases of the party in power interfering or obstructing the administration of justice for narrowly partisan purposes. It's a direct attack on the rule of law.

This much is already clear in the record. And we're now having a big public debate about the politics for each side if the president tries to obstruct the investigation and keep the truth from coming out. The contours and scope of executive privilege is one issue, and certainly an important one. But in this case it is being used as no more than a shield to keep the full extent of the president's perversion of the rule of law from becoming known.

• More great writing: Sidney Blumenthal in Salon.

The man Bush has nicknamed "Fredo," the weak and betraying brother of the Corleone family, is, unlike Fredo, a blind loyalist, and will not be dispatched with a shot to the back of the head in a rowboat on the lake while reciting his Ave Maria. (Is Bush aware that Colin Powell refers to him as "Sonny," after the hothead oldest son?) But saving "Fredo" doesn't explain why Bush is willing to risk a constitutional crisis. Why is Bush going to the mattresses against the Congress? What doesn't he want known?

In the U.S. attorneys scandal, Gonzales was an active though second-level perpetrator. While he gave orders, he also took orders. Just as his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, has resigned as a fall guy, so Gonzales would be yet another fall guy if he were to resign. He was assigned responsibility for the purge of U.S. attorneys but did not conceive it. The plot to transform the U.S. attorneys and ipso facto the federal criminal justice system into the Republican Holy Office of the Inquisition had its origin in Karl Rove's fertile mind.

How little self-respect do you have to have to allow yourself to be nicknamed "Fredo"?

• Tony Snow continued his reign of embarrassment as White House press secretary by claiming, on numerous occasions today, that Congress "doesn't have oversight ability over the White House," which came as news to the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. This is the kind of argument that's so much bullshit that you almost start clapping at the audacity of it all.

• And finally: this may be the craziest aspect of this entire story. Brett Tolman, then a staffer for Sen. Arlen Specter, was apparently responsible for slipping the provision into the PATRIOT Act that allowed the Justice Department to appoint replacement US Attorneys without Senate confirmation. Funny story... turns out that he's now the US Attorney for Utah.

Fall Into The Gap

So there are 18 days that are practically unaccounted for in the DoJ's document dump. There are scattered emails from the time period between mid-November and early December, but very little, and even those are a bit irrelevant to the larger questions about the case.

But get this from Tony Snow at the press briefing this morning.

HENRY: You keep saying the Justice Department, the response, the 3,000 pages, unprecedented, it’s very responsive. Why then is these this gap from mid-November to about December 4, right before the actual firings? Why is there a gap in the emails?

SNOW: I don’t know, why don’t you ask them.

HENRY: Well, you’re the White House, the Justice Department serves under…

SNOW: I know, but I’m not going to be the fact witness on Justice.

HENRY: But you’re the one representing that be this has been very responsive. Now when there’s a gap, you say go to them —

SNOW: Yeah, and I’ve been led to believe — I’ve been led to believe that there’s a good response for it, but I’m going to let you ask them because they’re going to have the answer.

"I've been led to believe there's a good response for it." Sure there is; they're hiding something.

Interestingly, here's one of the last emails before the gap:



Man, this is getting interesting. Not to mention the fact that they're claiming executive privilege and that the executive had nothing to do with the firings AT THE SAME TIME.

I think K-Drum has this cold.

They’ve now had nearly two months to come up with a simple, clear, understandable explanation for why they chose those eight to fire but not the others. So what is it? And why has it taken such an interminable amount of internal chaos to come up with something?

People aren’t stupid. If there were a simple, innocent explanation we would have heard it in January. The fact that the president of the United States held a press conference eight weeks after this issue first hit the media and still didn’t have a plausible story to tell suggests pretty strongly that there is no plausible story to tell.

If they could only have gotten their stories straight from the beginning, we wouldn't have known about any of this. But they couldn't, and here we are.

You Messed With The Wrong Marine

All hell is breaking loose over the incredible and harrowing story of how we treat disabled Iraq War veterans at Walter Reed medical hospital, which appeared not just in The Washington Post, but was corroborated by The Army Times.

Yet when it was time for the Army to take care of him, one of its wounded warriors, Van Antwerp gave up before he even began. Rather than fight for a higher disability rating, he quietly signed for 20 percent — and no medical benefits — saying he knew he couldn’t do better. He inherited his father’s stubbornness, he said, and refused to ask anyone to pull strings based on his dad’s rank. Then his first medical board counselor, the person who would help him make his way through the medical evaluation board system, left. The second, he said, “wasn’t on the ball.”

“The Army is trying to give you the lowest amount of money possible,” he said. “A lot of people are appealing, but I’ll be going to [the Department of Veterans Affairs]. I want to go home.”

Van Antwerp is one of thousands of wounded troops rushed from the war zone for health care and then stranded in administrative limbo. They are at the mercy of a medical evaluation system that’s agonizingly slow, grossly understaffed and saddled with a growing backlog of cases. The wounded soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are stuck in holding companies awaiting hearings and decisions on whether they will continue their military service or be discharged, and if so, at what level of benefits — if any.

The least we could do is to take care of those who fight this war. But Republican ideology of drowning government in the bathtub ensures that we don't even do that. It's disgraceful.

And Democrats are rightfully angry.

Following two votes last week in which Democrats rejected President Bush's surge plan and faced questioning from Republicans regarding their commitment to the troops, Democrats quickly seized on a story published by the Washington Post describing the conditions some soldiers encounter at Walter Reed.

"Caring for our returning heroes is one of the things we can still get right about this war, and that's why the deterioration of the conditions at Walter Reed is both appalling and unacceptable," presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said.

Obama and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said they would introduce legislation to improve the ratio of caseworkers to recovering soldiers, ensure caseworkers are better trained, cut back on the red tape recovering soldiers confront and set a timeline for repairs to "substandard facilities."

"I felt sick when I read these articles about how our injured American military men and women are being treated at Walter Reed," McCaskill said. "They sacrificed and fought bravely in Iraq and Afghanistan. They shouldn't have to fight a whole new war at home to receive the service and compensation they deserve."

In the House, Louise Slaughter (D-NY), chairwoman of the Rules Committee, wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

I urge you to explain why the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, once the crown-jewel of military medicine, has become a bleak and frustrating place for our wounded soldiers to recover, and what the Army intends to do to restore the integrity of its medical system.

This weekend's Washington Post series revealing the "other Walter Reed" was stunning. It painted a picture of abhorrent living conditions and a bureaucratic nightmare for our wounded soldiers in outpatient care. In striking detail, the series described how one of the outpatient facilities, Building 18, is marked by rodent infestation, mold problems, and crumbling ceilings. As if the facilities were not bad enough, wounded soldiers and their families must wrestle daily with an Army bureaucracy ill-equipped to provide them with the attention and care they need. Wounded soldiers are often left on their own to make and keep appointments, and fill out the 22 documents needed to enter and exit the Army's medical system.

The commander at Walter Reed moved quickly into damage control mode, saying that repairs on the infamous Building 18, infested with cockroaches and bad plumbing and a broken elevator, have begun. But Slaughter was correct to point out that, without the WaPo expose in the first place, nothing would have been done. It takes 9-1-1, crisis, emergency mode to get this Administration off of their ass to do anything.

In a tense White House press briefing, Tony Snow claimed Bush never knew about the appalling conditions at Walter Reed (although I think he got suckered into saying that, and Snow corrected the record as an addendum to a later transcript), and then actually said that everyone should go ask the Pentagon about it:

Q Were you aware?

MR. SNOW: We are aware now, yes. And I would refer you to the Department of Defense, which I know is taking a very close look at it, too.

Look, the men and women who have gone and fought for our country over there, they deserve the best care.

Q So why has that not been guaranteed, then?

MR. SNOW: I'm not sure that -- you know, when you find a problem, you deal with it.

Q So you're saying the President learned about this from The Washington Post?

MR. SNOW: I don't know exactly where he learned it, but I can tell you that we believe that they deserve better. And, again, Ed, this is something where I'd suggest you give DoD a call, because I know they've taken a good, hard look at it.

Right, because the President apparently has no say over the rogue, out-of-control Department of Defense under his executive command.

This story's going to have legs, and it dovetails with Rep. Murtha's call for readiness in the Armed Forces. Readiness on the battlefield extends to the hospitals and the outpatient facilities as well. You cannot keep a war going when you can't even decently house the wounded.