TX-Sen: John Cornyn thinks you're an idiot

Or, perhaps, 11 years old.

Yeah, this is a serious ad, and yeah, this is about John Cornyn's intellectual caliber. Who wouldn't want to have a "brew or two" with the Bad Ass Christian Cowboy Senator? Especially the one who kinda looks like John Lithgow?

For those of you who don't remember the esteemed Senator from Dodge City Texas, he's one of Jack Abramoff's buddies who famously implied on the Senate floor that judges themselves, because of judicial activism, were to blame for a recent spate of violence against them. This was back in those dark days of l'Affair Schiavo, when there were widespread fears that militant social conservatives would take action against the judges who "killed" Terri.

He also had a classic exchange with Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin after the revelations of the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping. Cornyn says to Feingold:

"None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."

Feingold's reply?

"Give me liberty or give me death."

we're getting stupider every day

Nevermind, this is the stupidest argument I've heard about the VA Tech massacre, coming from Newt Gingrich blaming the incident on, yes, liberals:

“Well, who has created a situation ethics, essentially, zone of not being willing to talk about any of these things. Let me carry another example. I strongly supported Imus being dismissed, but I also think the very thing he was dismissed for, which is the use of language which is stunningly degrading of women — the fact, for example, that one of the Halloween costumes this last year was being able to be either a prostitute or a pimp at 10, 11, 12 years of age, buying a costume, and we don’t have any discussion about what’s happened to our culture because while we’re restricting political free speech under McCain-Feingold, we say it’s impossible to restrict vulgar and vicious and anti-human speech. And I would argue that that’s a major component of what’s happened to our culture in the last 40 years.”

I know, I know, we could highlight a thousand points of wankery in this block, from Newtie's own authority to talk about moral values considering his past to the hysterically termed "political free speech." Suffice it to say this is yet one more example of why rhetorical hatchet men like Gingrich have no credibility and one of the biggest problems with our media is the fact that anybody asks what this jackass thinks in the first place with any intention besides contempt and ridicule.

only one possible conclusion

Republicans are telling us that, for Congress to cut funding for the troops is to put the troops in harm's way. Yet, as Senator Feingold frequently notes, Republicans had no problem defunding the war in Somalia in the '90's:

Every member of Congress agrees that we must continue to support our troops and give them the resources and support they need. And every member of Congress should know that we can do that while at the same time ending funding for a failed military mission. That was clearly understood in October 1993, when 76 senators voted for an amendment, offered by Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, to end funding for the military mission in Somalia effective March 31, 1994, with limited exceptions.

None of those 76 senators, who include the current Republican leader and whip, acted to jeopardize the safety and security of U.S. troops in Somalia. All of them recognized that Congress had the power and the responsibility to bring our military operations in Somalia to a close, by establishing a date after which funds would be terminated.[emphasis mine]

So how could one possibly rationalize those 2 actions?

There is one way: what the Republicans are tacitly telling us (and George W. Bush is openly admitting) is that Bush cannot be trusted to protect the troops as Commander-in-Chief. You see, Congress felt comfortable that it could strip the Clinton Administration of war funding with the full confidence that the Commander-in-Chief would then order a safe and orderly redeployment with the time he has remaining. There was no question that the troops would be no less safe and secure if Congress defunded the conflict.

The Bush Administration, however, is so craven and callous and stubborn that, if Congress tries to defund the war in Iraq, there's a significant chance that Bush will just keep them there anyway and watch them run out of bullets, essentially playing chicken with soldiers' lives. It's more dangerous for Congress to strip the funds from the Iraq War because Bush cannot be trusted to act in good faith.