And you thought meat came from cows.
In my ongoing attempt to stay on top of all the porcine news, I give you:
It’s not strictly pigs, but you could do bacon.
Foxes, henhouses and of course, covering W’s arse
What do you do when you’re in danger of being investigated by U.S. Attorneys General, as is pretty much the entire Bush administration at long last?
Some saps, of course, would defend themselves in court, certain of their innocence. But why do that when the Patriot Act gives you the right to fire U.S. Attorneys General and replace them without congressional approval? Bush and Co. have axed at least four [update: seven], with more to go.
It makes me ill. But what can anybody do about it? Nothing except report the facts, but at the bottom of the bin we’ll still have Karl Rove thumbing his nose at the rule of law. There’s a remedy spelled out in the Constitution for dealing with this.
Josh Marshall over at the very fine Talking Points Memo gets credit for covering this in the detail it deserves. Exhibit A is fun– a former Karl Rove toady seems to be replacement Attorney General No. 1! That’s gonna be some hard-hitting investigating.
Better use that spell-checker, Johnny Journo
In other despicable news, one of the guys who makes me ashamed to have even a vestige of a Southern accent, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, slipped a little something into a spending bill recently. It’s a provision that says contractors in war zones can get court-martialed. While that might only be exciting to legal scholars, the wording is broad enough that it allows for a little something else, too.
From Griff Witte’s story in the Washington Post:
"Right now, you have two different standards for people doing the same job," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who pushed the provision. "This will bring uniformity to the commander’s ability to control the behavior of people representing our country."
…
Graham said the change was aimed solely at holding contractors accountable. But legal observers say it could be interpreted broadly to also include employees with other government agencies, as well as reporters.
