Hard Times (Post-T.E.A. Hangover Edition)

To borrow a Rocky & Bullwinkle riff, tune in today for "Anatomy of a smear" or "Another day at the office at the New York Times":

A senior FBI agent is charging that the National Security Agency under the Bush Administration considered wiretapping a member of Congress without a warrant, according to the New York Times.

The allegation, buried in a story discussing allegedly illegal surveillance of American domestic phone calls, sparked a guessing game in Washington Thursday because the article only hints at the identity of the lawmaker.

The reason the NSA considered tapping the lawmaker is made clear in the article: the congressman - part of a delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 - was in contact with an extremist already on the agency's watch list.

Apparently the idea was nixed when agency officials decided it might not be a great idea to spy on a member of Congress, particularly without court oversight.

Um, maybe it's me, but doesn't that appear to indicate there's no story?

The irony of course being that there is more than just a handful of Donk members of Congress who doubtless merit a tap on every means of communication they possess as legit national security threats.  If anything, the Bushies were derelict in their duty.

Funny how the Times doesn't mention any taps on their phones.  Maybe that's because the need was so overpoweringly obvious that even they took it for granted; maybe that's because the New Tone trumped even protecting the lives of American civilians; but most likely it's because the tabloid of bathroom tissue was too busy padding their pile of post-Bush Bush-bashing exposes with lists of every other "offense" Dubya never actually committed.

I do rather hope that the mystery congresscritter is revealed, though.  I can't wait to see them frame and mount the words, "I was almost but never actually wiretapped by Bushitler" on t-shirts at the Capitol gift shop.

UPDATE: Then again, why bothering commemorating a "crime" nobody committed with t-shirts that could actually generate revenue when Dems can waste billions of dollars of everybody else's money by officially "investigating" it?

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Well, you know False Messiah - he simply does not tolerate any competition:

The White House had a monogram that symbolizes the name of Jesus hidden from the backdrop of a speech President Obama gave at Georgetown University Tuesday.

The letters IHS are an ancient monogram for the name of Jesus Christ, according to the online Catholic Encyclopedia. They stand on a wooden archway above the dais where Obama gave his speech.

The White House requested that all university signs and symbols behind the stage be concealed, said Julie Bataille, spokeswoman for the Jesuit-founded school in Washington, D.C.

"The White House wanted a simple backdrop of flags and pipe and drape for the speech, consistent with what they've done for other policy speeches," Bataille told the Washington Times.

Not all Catholics in the nation's capital were willing to deny the True Messiah for the proverbial thirty sheckels of silver, though:

The Catholic University of America, also in Washington, might have handled the situation differently. "I can’t imagine, as the bishops’ university and the national university of the Catholic Church, that we would ever cover up our religious art or signage for any reason,” Catholic University spokesman Victor Nakas told the Times,

“Our Catholic faith is integral to our identity as an institution of higher education,” he said.

Oh, yeah, sure, it was just for the photographic backdrop; they didn't want anything too busy; they wanted to be consistent with past speeches.  Uh-huh.

And when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had the breasts on a topless female statue covered up in the background of a public address he was to give, the Leftariat napalmed the A-G with withering ridicule for his "uptight, silly prudery" and a host of rhetoric too, um, "impolite" to bother reproducing here.  Say what you will about Mr. Ashcroft's taste for "fine art," but he was honest and, uh, "up front" about it.  Meanwhile, the president who claims to be a "practicing Christian" when he's not doing his impression of King Herod while simultaneously lavenderizing the armed forces, among other heresies, was so overflowing with tolerance and "live and let live" goodwill that he couldn't even allow a Latin symbol for Christ not one viewer in - what, a hundred?  A thousand? - would ever have recognized as such.

If Georgetown wants to make up for their shameful capitulation next time without getting on Red Barry's crap list, let 'em take a crucifix out of its urine jar and glue a fake set 'o tits on it.  Heck, he might be so taken with it that he'll put in the Oval Office where the Winston Churchill bust used to be.

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So now Texas Governor Rick Perry is at the eye of a tempest over this?:

Texas Governor Rick Perry warned that people in his state could become so frustrated with the federal government that they could demand that Texas secede from the union.

Speaking at a rally at Austin City Hall on Wednesday — “Tax Day” — Perry charged that Washington officials have abandoned the nation’s founding principles of limited government and said the federal government is burdening Americans with taxation and debt, the Dallas Morning News reported.

The Republican said when Texas, an independent republic, entered the union in 1845, it was with the understanding that it could secede — a right held by no other state.

Some in the flag-waving crowd at the rally chanted “secede!”

Perry said: “Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that.

“We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what might come out of that.”

Well, actually, we do know one thing that won't come out of that, and that's secession.  Largely because Governor Perry never suggested it.  He was playing off the rally crowd.  It's called tongue-in-cheek.  Joshing.  Leg-pulling.  Ha, ha, ha.  But libs, to whom humor is foreign when it isn't coming from laying waste to the lives and reputations of conservative targets, took it dead-stock seriously because it played right into the wheelhouse of their politicoideological prejudices.

Besides, Red Barry is never going to let a morsel that big slip through his iron-grubby fingers.  He wants all fifty-seven states, even if that one is overrun with Jesus freaks, facelifted Cowboys, and George W. Bush.  And he's got the nuclear command codes to back him up.

Wish somebody in the crowd had brought THAT up.

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Well, this is disheartening:

Two court rulings delivered significant blows to Republican Jim Tedisco’s hopes of overcoming a series of absentee-ballot setbacks that have left him falling farther behind Democrat Scott Murphy in the upstate New York congressional race.

Murphy leads Tedisco by 167 votes, as absentee and other paper ballots continue to be tallied....

The two rulings by Dutchess County Justice James V. Brands complicate Tedisco’s efforts to challenge ballots that he believes should be rejected.

Specifically, Brands ruled late Wednesday that some of Tedisco’s reasons for challenging ballots are invalid. Brands stated that if both Republican and Democratic election commissioners in a county agree an absentee ballot is valid, the ballot should be counted even if a campaign objects to its validity.

As an apparent concession to Tedisco, however, Brands ruled that absentee-ballot envelopes should be preserved in such a case, and a notation should be made that the ballot was challenged prior to its being counted.

According to CQPolitics.com, Brands also blocked a Tedisco bid to review applications voters filed for absentee ballots prior to the election. Tedisco’s legal team maintains that scores of votes in the district were cast by Democrats whose primary residences are in New York City and Long Island.

Tedisco spokesman Tyler Brown tells Newsmax, “Residents of the 20th Congressional District need to have confidence that this election was decided fairly, and not unduly influenced by residents of New York City."

How the Tedisco campaign could verify double residency, or find other disqualifying evidence, without examining the absentee-ballot applications remains to be seen. A hearing before Judge Brands has been set for Monday to review that question.

"We've received the judge's order and are preparing to make our case before him on Monday that this election should be decided by the voters of the 20th Congressional District and not be unduly influenced by residents of New York City," Tedisco attorney James E. Walsh tells Newsmax.

Look, I've been known to hyperbolize from time to time to make a particular point.  Even employ sacrcasm as a rhetorical tool every once in a while.  Our readers are well familiar with our rhetorical devices and have no difficulty distinguishing between satire and serious analysis.  That's squarely where I want to see that line of demarcation remain.

But as they say, once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a trend - and we passed "trend" a long time ago.  Once again we have another photo finish contest in another swing district of another "blue" state where once again the absentees should favor the Republican candidate and yet here is another "blue" judge tipping another set of electoral scales to help another Democrat candidate hang enough chads to go over the top.  And unlike the hapless Norm Coleman in Minnesota, Jim Tedisco was, indeed, prepared - and he's still getting screwed.

Scott Murphy should be delighted with Judge Brand's "helpfulness".  What he should stop trying to put over is that he's in any way surprised.  He's simply one more Jackass bearing out a Hewittian axiom that is bleeding the Republican Party and American democracy alike whiter than Ann Coulter's shoulders.

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Watch where the trap door opens:

Military affairs expert Ralph Peters is calling for the firing of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano over a report warning that right-wing extremists could recruit U.S. veterans for violent anti-government activity.

Peters, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who is now a columnist and author, also called on President Barack Obama to apologize for the report.

Veterans groups are up in arms over a footnote in the report, which was released last week by Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, stating that violent acts could be committed by “right-wing extremists” concerned about illegal immigration, abortion, increasing federal power and restrictions on firearms — and singling out war veterans as vulnerable to recruitment.

Napolitano apologized to veterans for the report in an interview with Fox News on Thursday, saying: “To the extent veterans read it as an accusation . . . an apology is owed.

“The last thing we want to do is offend or castigate all veterans. To the contrary let’s meet and clear the air.

“If there’s one part of that report I would rewrite . . . after the fact it would be that footnote.”

Boing!

And that's it.  Napolitano doesn't believe a word of her ersatz, hedge-happy, mealy-mouthed, CYA "apology," but she offered it up anyway because that will put the brief uproar to bed as far as the Obamedia is concerned no matter how much Lieutenant-Colonel Peters makes a well-justified cause celebre of it.  Reverse the partisan labels and the apology would not only be blasted by that same Donk propagana apparatus as "insincere" and "insufficient" but would be only the beginning of sorrows for poor "Janet From Another Planet," whose reputation would be dog meat and her Beltway career would be on terminal life support - probably gone within the calendar year.

But she's a Dem, Peters is a Republican, and she defamed America's veterans, past, present, and future.  And everybody knows they're all a bunch of murderous psychopaths, right?

Just as Secretary Napolitano.  She'll be happy to tell you all about, sorry to say so as she is.