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All the discussion has been about Obama's selection of Leon Panetta and what it means for the CIA, but the most significant part of today's announcement was the statement that leads off this video:

The United States does not torture. We will abide by the Geneva Conventions. That we will uphold our highest values and ideals.

Meanwhile, all the fussing about how folks in the CIA feel about Panetta's imminent appointment is put in perspective, I think, by Melvin Goodman of the Center for International Policy, himself an intel veteran:

DeYoung and Warrick disingenuously repeated the assertion of one senior CIA officer that the “agency was neither consulted nor informed” about the Panetta nomination. More balderdash! The CIA has never been consulted about the nomination of a CIA director nor should it. It is unlikely that Foreign Service Officers were asked to vet the selection of Senator Hillary Clinton as secretary of state or that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were asked if they would support the nomination of Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense in 2001. Civil servants have no role to play in the selection of senior officials of the government, and their professionalism requires support for their leadership, regardless of political beliefs. We certainly expect U.S. military officers, who are overwhelmingly members of the Republican Party, to support the national security policies of Democratic administrations. We should assume that CIA officers will do the same.

His piece is really about how the media -- and the Washington Post in particular -- are in fact being played by CIA operatives in their reportage on this.

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We knew this was coming:

SPRINGFIELD---In a historic vote, the Illinois House has impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich, directing the Senate to put the state’s 40th chief executive on trial with the goal of removing him from office.

The vote by the House was 114-1 and marks the first time in the state's 190-year history that a governor has been impeached, despite Illinois' longstanding reputation for political corruption.

Meanwhile, it appears that Roland Burris may have been less than forthcoming about his contacts with Blago:

For the first time, Burris indicated that he asked Blagojevich's former chief of staff and college classmate, Lon Monk, to relay his interest in the Senate seat to the governor last July or September.

"If you're close to the governor, you know, let him know I'm certainly interested in the seat," Burris said he told Monk.

That testimony appears to differ from an affidavit Burris submitted to the impeachment panel this week in which he stated he spoke to no "representatives" of the governor about the Senate post prior to Dec. 26.

What else would you expect from a guy who would take this appointment under these circumstances anyway?

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In the previous night's edition of Talking Out My Hindquarters (aka The O'Reilly Factor), BillO The Clown got into a hilarious Ego Pie Fight with Ann The Bozo over some advice he wanted to pass along from a fellow wingnut buffoon, Bernie Goldberg (Coulter just snorted and said she only listened to people who sold more books than she her, which I guess means she's listening closely to Stephen King and Danielle Steele).

So BillO, kindly fellow that he is, had Goldberg on tonight to finally make his offering (not before, of course, noting that both he and BillO's books have sold better than Coulter's):

Goldberg: Here's the advice I would have given: Go on with liberal journalists. And tell them: "Yeah, do I go over the top sometimes? Do I say things that perhaps don't sound civil? Yeah. But I do it to point out your hypocrisy. Because if Al Franken came on, or Bill Maher -- two really nasty guys as far as I'm concerned -- you would sit there and giggle with them, you liberal anchor. But when I come on, you're all over me. That's why I do it -- to point out your liberal hypocrisy."

That was my only advice.

O'Reilly: And that was great advice.

Goldberg: Perhaps she'd want to listen, perhaps not. I agree with Ann Coulter 90 percent of the time.

O'Reilly: I think that Ann Coulter is watching right now. And she should do that, because that is devastating. That is absolutely devastating, when the liberal people go after her, say, hey, if it were Franken or Maher here you'd be yukkin' it up.

Yeah, that would have been devastating, just devastating.

Unless, of course, the "liberal" (read: non-wingnut) show host/journalist had two brain cells to scratch together (not always a given) and could muster a response along the following lines:

"Sure, Ann, but neither Franken nor Maher -- nor for that matter any liberal you can name -- have ever joked about bombing thousands of people at the New York Times Building, or urged their audiences to act like violent thugs against their political opponents, or proudly trumpeted the use of ethnic slurs, or extolled the virtues of 'local fascism.'

"We're not talking about your political views, Ann -- we couldn't care less if you're right, left, center, or upside-down. We're talking about fundamental human decency. You plainly lack it. Franken and Maher may offend, but they don't descend into the sewer from which you regularly come crawling."

Something like that. It could be simpler. But you get the idea.

And I suspect Coulter -- unlike her grandfatherly advisers -- is smart enough to know that, which is why she doesn't bother.

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Crazy Nativist Sheriff Joe Arpaio from Arizona was on Conan O'Brien's late-nite show last night, touting his dubious new reality-TV show on Fox. They showed a clip of it, and it looks like an entertainment straight out of Brazil.

What resulted was the usual travesty when entertainment talkers host newsmaking figures -- the underlying issues were distorted and falsified, and an ugly authoritarian was presented as a mainstream "good guy."

O'Brien couldn't evade the fact that Arpaio is a controversial figure (in fact, NBC had been inundated with phone calls protesting his appearance), and brought it up:

O'Brien: OK, let's cut to the chase. You are quite a controversial, polarizing figure. You'll admit that, that is true. You've done some things in your state that have a lot of people upset. We actually had a group distributing leaflets downstairs for a group protesting your appearance on the show. That has not happened since Howie Mandel was here several years ago.

[Laughter]

O'Brien then starts to enumerate the supposed reasons people are "upset" with Arpaio -- and names Arpaio's use of pink underwear for his inmates in Maricopa County's jails. From there the interview devolves into a cute depiction of Arpaio as a get-tough kinda guy who just wants to put bad guys in jail.

The pink underwear, however, is just a minor indication of the bigger problem Arpaio represents: a toxic mix of Nativist racism and thuggish authoritarianism in a police authority.

The people downstairs don't care that much about the pink underwear. What they care about is the naked racial profiling Arpaio has indulged in harassing Latinos in his county. They care about the horrendous law-enforcement record that Arpaio's fetish about illegal immigrants has produced. They care about the expensive lawsuits taxpayers will have to ante up for that Arpaio has wrought, mostly from the horrendous jail conditions he has permitted.

O'Brien, for some reason, didn't mention any of that. Instead, one of the country's ugliest authoritarians was packaged for the public as a stand-up guy. What a joke. And it's not a funny one.

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Bill O'Reilly devoted another Talking Points Memo segment last night to his new pet thesis that Barack Obama is going to make the nation vulnerable to terrorist attack by taking torture off the table, and then brought Karl Rove on to back it all up:

You know, when he gets behind that desk, and has the awesome responsibility of protecting our country, anybody who's chief executive of the United States is going to want to have the ability, in a time of a great crisis, to call upon enhanded interrogation techniques.

A little later, he closes with this:

Look, if you've taken techniques that have kept America safe and you discard them, you are putting the country at risk and you're going to have to bear the consequences of that.

OK, let me see if I can keep this all straight.

We're now getting advice on how to prevent a terrorist attack from "the Brain" of an administration that manifestly failed at that because it was asleep at the wheel on 9/11, am I right? And they're telling us the torture regime they installed in the interim is responsible for the lack of subsequent attacks afterward -- rather than making the likelihood of future attacks greater?

Karl Rove was a key player in an administration that, in the first eight months of its tenure, specifically undermined counterterrorism programs in an essentially political dismissal of such work as "a Clinton thing."

There was the Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US," which concluded that terrorists planned to attack us using airplanes. It was ignored.

There was that briefing George Tenet gave Condi Rice on the immensity of the threat, which both she and George W. Bush also ignored -- and then lied about doing so afterward. Indeed, Rice and the Bush administration ent to great measures to cover up their own incompetence.

There was the Hart-Rudman Commission report, which warned the White House in May 2001 that it needed to take serious steps to prevent a terrorist attack. The report was ignored.

So was Richard Clarke's memo of January 2001 warning of the terrorist threat.

And finally, there were the Bush White House's pre-9/11 actions on a pure policy level: "Attorney General John Ashcroft not only moved aggressively to reduce DoJ's anti-terrorist budget but also shift DoJ's mission in spirit to emphasize its role as a domestic police force and anti-drug force." The administration also shifted Department of Defense counter-terrorism funding into missile-defense-system programs.

And yet for all that record, everyone in the press -- most especially Bill O'Reilly -- gave the Bush administration a pass for its massive malfeasance on terrorism, and came to believe that the lack of subsequent attacks meant that suddenly this gang knew what it was doing.

Even though what it was doing entailed violating basic international war-crimes laws and stoking the flames of hatred for the United States. As the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate found, Bush's invasion-under-false-pretenses of Iraq has actually made it far more likely we will have to endure future terrorist attacks.

That report noted that "actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement" included "the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal."

In other words, Karl Rove and his Jet Set Junta made it far more likely that we're going to be hit by terrorists in the coming years, the credit going in part to misbegotten torture policies that have been proven ineffective and counterproductive. And calling an end to those policies will make us more vulnerable? Oh really?

And if such an attack happens, it will be Obama's fault, according to Bill O'Reilly. Because only Republicans get to skate when terrorists strike on their watch.

These people are not just crooks and liars. They're also insane.

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President-elect Barack Obama laid out his case for an economic-stimulus package this morning, warning that the current recession could "linger for years" unless Congress acts to pump historic sums of federal cash into the economy. He added that the current economic crisis is “unlike any we have seen in our lifetime.”

We start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime - a crisis that has only deepened over the last few weeks. Nearly two million jobs have now been lost, and on Friday we are likely to learn that we lost more jobs last year than at any time since World War II. Just in the past year, another 2.8 million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs. Manufacturing has hit a twenty-eight year low. Many businesses cannot borrow or make payroll. Many families cannot pay their bills or their mortgage. Many workers are watching their life savings disappear. And many, many Americans are both anxious and uncertain of what the future will hold.

I don't believe it's too late to change course, but it will be if we don't take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years. The unemployment rate could reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four. We could lose a generation of potential and promise, as more young Americans are forced to forgo dreams of college or the chance to train for the jobs of the future. And our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world.

And he made clear he understands how we got here:

This crisis did not happen solely by some accident of history or normal turn of the business cycle, and we won't get out of it by simply waiting for a better day to come, or relying on the worn-out dogmas of the past. We arrived at this point due to an era of profound irresponsibility that stretched from corporate boardrooms to the halls of power in Washington, DC. For years, too many Wall Street executives made imprudent and dangerous decisions, seeking profits with too little regard for risk, too little regulatory scrutiny, and too little accountability. Banks made loans without concern for whether borrowers could repay them, and some borrowers took advantage of cheap credit to take on debt they couldn't afford. Politicians spent taxpayer money without wisdom or discipline, and too often focused on scoring political points instead of the problems they were sent here to solve. The result has been a devastating loss of trust and confidence in our economy, our financial markets, and our government.

Expect Republicans to squawk at talk like this. But the fact is that conservative governance got us into this mess. Obama (and the rest of us) are betting that progressive governance will get us out.

Susie Madrak:

Obviously, this isn't how I would handle it.

I'd say to the American people, "Look, I'm done pretending that these evil Republican bastards and their greedy, short-sighted economic policies haven't put us in this deep economic ditch. They want tax cuts to please their base, but they're not getting them BECAUSE WE ALREADY KNOW THEY WON'T WORK.

"What will work is what I've proposed, and it's up to you, the people, to call your congress critters and senators to tell them pointblank: they either support our massive stimulus package, or you and your neighbors will be storming their homes and offices with pitchforks and torches. I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of treating the ravings of these mendacious excuses for human beings as reality, and you should be, too.

"We didn't do our job, any of us. If we had, we wouldn't be in this mess. In the name of bipartisanship, we actually treated their destructive ideas as if they had value. Boy, were we wrong! Well, no more Mr. Nice Guy. Time to tell these Republican maroons to get the hell out of the way, or they can go back to the free market to find out what they're really worth.

"Thank you, and may God bless the countless victims of this Republican greed."

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Yes, we know it's a schtick. Ann Coulter gets paid millions of dollars to say outrageous things. She has to keep coming up with new ones or she'll be out of work. And it would be best if we all could just ignore her.

But as I learned long ago, ignoring these people away doesn't work -- especially when, like Coulter, she can team up with her pal Drudge to maumau NBC into putting her back on-air even after they'd come to their senses and realized they were being had. Well, she did it again. More importantly, she can go on all these national talk shows -- as she did today, appearing not just on NBC but also CNN with Lou Dobbs and on Fox with Bill O'Reilly.

And it was on the Dobbs show that she once again advocated the "benefits of local fascism" (as she once put it) by urging Republicans to start physically assaulting their political tormentors:

Coulter: One beautiful example of this -- and illustrating the theme of the book -- in the last chapter, um, at the Republican National Convention, Sarah Palin gets up to give her -- the most important political speech in a decade, where she's being introduced to the nation, two Obama fundraisers stand up and start screaming at her and storming the stage.

Now, Point One: How many newspapers reported that story? That's right, two local newspapers. No place else. Do you think it would have made news if a major McCain fundraiser had stood up during Obama's speech at the convention and had started screaming and storming the stage?

[Ed. Note: You can see the video of the incident in question here. As you can see, the protesters did not "storm the stage."]

Moreover, I mean, the stunning thing about this story is, if you can get the video, and you only see it online, you see all these Republican men standing there, right next to these screaming banshees, doing nothing! Doing nothing! Sheez, you have this 99-pound woman in heels, onstage trying to deliver the most important speech of her life, and strong Republican men standing there -- how about a punch in the yap to these screaming banshees?

This isn't the first time Coulter has advocated such action, of course. At various times in the past, she's wished aloud for skinhead thugs to do her bidding and called upon Republican students at one of her talks to "Take 'em out" when protesters appeared.

So yes, I'm sorry, but it's important to pay attention when right-wing ideologues with huge audiences begin advocating violence.

The only other thing they're really worth paying attention for is to laugh at them. And Coulter gave us that today on the O'Reilly show.

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I know Coulter thinks she's funny. And today on Fox she really was, though I don't think it was intentional.

It was in fact a Colossal Battle of The Spectacularly Oversized Egos. Among other things, she argued with O'Reilly over who sells the most books:

O'Reilly: Bernie Goldberg has some advice ...

[Coulter snorts derisively]

O'Reilly: ... for you. Should I, should I not go there?

Coulter: Um, my general policy is to take advice from people who sell more books than I do, not fewer books than I do.

O'Reilly: Oh. You take advice from me then.

Coulter: No! No! I said more books.

O'Reilly: Yeah, I sell more books than you do.

Coulter: No you don't.

O'Reilly: Yes I do.

Coulter: No you don't.

O'Reilly: But we don't want to get in an argument about that.

Pure comedy gold, I tell ya.

Coulter is becoming a joke. Which is what she always was, anyway.

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In today's episode of As The Stomach Turns, Harry Reid signaled at this morning's presser that he's leaving open a door for Roland Burris to walk through.

After a 45-minute meeting this morning between Burris, Reid and his lieutenant, Sen.Dick Durbin, Reid said Senate Democrats would wait to see if the Illinois Supreme Court would order Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White to sign Burris' appointment by Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

I think we can probably count on the Illinois Supreme Court informing Jesse White he has to sign the appointment. Which leaves Harry Reid holding a nice stinky bag of crap.

If it's any consolation, the public agrees with Reid that Burris' appointment is tainted and he shouldn't be seated. That will make it tougher for Burris to win the seat in two years, but that's the price Rod Blagojevich is making us all pay. Including Harry Reid.

Meanwhile, Reid is saying he expects to keep leading the Senate for a good long time. All he's really doing is making an argument against seniority and incumbency, because he has done nothing to demonstrate he's worthy of leading the Senate. Especially not recently. As Jane says, I'd sure like to play poker with Reid -- and I usually make a habit of never playing against guys from Nevada.

Roland Martin thinks Democrats just need to suck it up and accept that Burris is the selection. I suspect he's right.

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I guess Bill O'Reilly decided he'd had enough of being just a demagogue last night and made the leap into his new persona as an unmistakably dangerous demagogue.

His Talking Points Memo segment is almost always amusing for its incoherence, but this time it was just inchoate: an attack on the Barack Obama's selection of Leon Panetta as CIA chief, ostensibly because of Panetta's lack of experience. The argument, as well as we could make it out, was that Obama is making the U.S. vulnerable to terror because he has chosen a CIA chief who wants us not to torture terror suspects.

Most of the early part of the rant is a regurgitation of O'Reilly's recent warnings that the "far left" wants to hijack Obama's presidency and that his approach to torture is reflective of that. Then he pulls a clip from his radio show earlier in the day, in which he interviewed Michael Scheuer, who's lately been absorbed by the Ron Paulians. Scheuer says this:

Michael Scheuer: I think that the only way to change policy is, sadly, another attack on the United States, and I think that's coming.

O'Reilly: Are you going to predict that?

Scheuer: Oh, I think so, sir. I think that within the next year we'll be attacked again. The opportunity is just too good a one. Um, taking down a lot of the rendition program and that kind of stuff makes things easier for the enemy --

And then O'Reilly launches into a classic naming-the-enemy rant -- the enemy, evidently, being embodied in l'il ole Baghdad By The Bay:

O'Reilly: But some Americans don't care. In fact, some Americans are even are supporting the enemy. In San Francisco, Ground Zero for anti-American displays, supporters of Hamas openly demonstrate against Israel and the USA. These people believe America is evil. And so do many in the media.

Bottom line on this, Barack Obama is taking a major risk by handcuffing U.S. intelligence in its vital task of disrupting and defeating terror. If we get hit, the U.S. will have huge problems.

So let's see: If Obama lets Panetta muck up the CIA's ability, we're going to get hit in the next year. But wait -- aren't we going to be hit no matter what? And isn't all that reflective of the 2006 NIE which warned that the Iraq war and Bush administration's handling of it (including the Abu Ghraib revelations) had made us actually more vulnerable to terrorist attack? Ah, but O'Reilly has long ago swept that particular fact under his mental rug.

That's just for starters. Next up on the program, he had on author/CIA expert Gary Berntsen, and "Fox Military Analyst" Col. David Hunt. Berntsen was largely baffled by the Panetta selection. Hunt, on the other hand, was largely bats--t crazy:

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[Transcript and more below.]

Continue reading »

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It's been assumed that Barack Obama's planned nomination of Leon Panetta as CIA chief was intended to send a signal to the intelligence community about the use of torture. And Obama made that explicit in his press conference today:

REPORTER: Some are questioning Leon Panetta's lack of intelligence -- lack of experience on intelligence matters. Sorry about that. I know this is tricky for you since you haven't announced him yet but what does he bring to the table for you.

OBAMA: Well, as you noted, I haven't made a formal announcement about my intelligence team. That may be him calling now -- finding out where it's at. I have the utmost respect for Leon Panetta. I think that he's one of the finest public servants that we've had. He brings extraordinary management skills, great political savvy, an impeccable record of integrity. As chief of staff, he's somebody who, to the president, he's somebody who was fully versed in international affairs, crisis management, and had to evaluate intelligence consistently on a day-to-day basis.

Having said all that, I have not made an announcement. When we make the announcement, I think what people will see is that we are putting together a top-notch intelligence team that is not only going to assure that I get the best possible intelligence -- unvarnished -- but that the intelligence community is no longer geared toward telling the president what they think the president wants to hear but instead are going to be delivering the information that the president needs to make critical decisions to keep the American people safe.

I think what you're also going to see is a team that is committed to breaking with some of the past practices and concerns that have, I think, tarnished the image of the agencies and intelligence agencies and U.S. foreign policy. Last point I will make on this is that there are outstanding intelligence professionals in the CIA, DNI and others and I have the utmost regard for the work that they've done and we are committed to making sure that this is a team effort that's not looking backwards but is looking forward to figure out how we're going to serve the American people best.

Of course, a Panetta appointment would send such a signal, since he has been such a pronounced critic of waterboarding and other such practices indulged by the CIA under Bush.

As with all these appointments, though, we should also be looking out for disinformation from the right. Today on Fox, Bill Kristol was trying to stir up opposition to Panetta from the left, pointing out that he was chief of staff at the White House in the 1990s when it began the policy of "extraordinary rendition" (i.e., capturing terrorists and then shipping them to nations where they can be interrogated by governments with fewer prohibitions.

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It's true that Panetta was CoS at the time Clinton adopted that policy (he signed the executive order in June 1995, during Panetta's tenure), but that is not prima facie evidence he favored it. Moreover, rendition under Clinton occurred only occasionally; as compared to the massive program involving hundreds of prisoners it became under Bush.

Expect, however, for the question to be raised during confirmation hearings. If it's coming from neocons, though, expect it to turn out to be wrong.

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Roland Burris makes his stand in defiance of Harry Reid today.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews talks it over with a panel including Howard Fineman, Pat Buchanan, CNBC's John Harwood, Brian DuBose of the Moonie Times, and Ann Kornbluth of the WaPo, and it's unanimous: Reid really doesn't have a legal leg to stand on.

Being a right-winger, DuBose clearly relishes this mess:

No, the conservatives don't have to cause any havoc here. The Democrats are doing a fine job themselves. Pat is right -- Harry Reid has put the Senate in a very precarious legal position, constitutionally. They have no constitutional authority to not allow Burris to take his rightful seat in the Senate. Now, they could expel him for reasons that they come up with if they seat him, that's a much better position to be in. But by barring him from the door they put themselves on a path towards legal suicide with the Supreme Court, if Burris decides to go that route. They have no legal standing to stop a representative of a state -- which is what the Senate is, representatives of states in their entirety -- they have no legal position to stop him from representing that state, as he is duly bound to do, appointed by a governor who is in power. It's -- it's case closed. He is the senator. Period.

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MSNBC analyst Jim Warren, discussing the Rod Blagojevich-Roland Burris mess, sounded a deeply cynical note yesterday on Hardball with Chris Matthews and Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times. Cynical, but probably right:

Warren: And one vision you didn't -- along with, you know, Lynn's vision of what might happen tomorrow, one we should have that would make us slightly dyspeptic, is that of Rod Blagojevich back there grinning like a Cheshire Cat, because -- the Saturday Night Live caricature aside, the bipartisan animus toward him aside, the likelihood that he will be indicted aside -- he has every legal right to do this. And I think he has pulled one over on Harry Reid and Dick Durbin. And Harry Reid is left looking like some parent huffing and puffing and warning his kid that there's gonna be big punishment unless he does what he says, and then the kid doesn't stop doing it, and then Harry Reid doesn't have anything left to go to, unless what? He's going to send it to the Rules Committee? And Chuck Schumer, head of the Rules Committee? Who wants Al Franken seated ASAP because Minnesota's gotta have two senators on that floor as quickly as possible. Boy, I think Blagojevich has really played this in the most cynical but adroit of ways.

Sweet goes on to suggest that Reid may cave if Burris agrees not to run in two years, but then Warren appropriately notes that Burris doesn't believe he has anything to negotiate.

I'm not sure why Burris needs it explained to him that Blagejovich himself tainted the process of selecting this Senate seat by his own actions and words, and that anyone he chose would be similarly tainted. It's kind of sad, really.

Let's just say that this is not an auspicious start to a Senate career, much less a Democratic defense of that seat. A better man would not have let himself be so tainted. Hell, even Danny Davis -- who hasn't enough sense not to take part in coronation ceremonies for Rev. Moon -- thought better of this.

Roland Burris may believe he has the legal right to this seat. But politically, it's another story. The voters of Illinois have no reason whatsoever to believe that he was chosen with their best interests in mind, because they have very good reason to believe Blago was only looking out for himself. They have no reason to believe otherwise now. This selection was Blago's, and because of that, it will always be about Blago.

Burris may force himself upon the Senate, but he may want to savor his two years while they last.

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Our old pal Jane Hamsher was "Muckraker of the Day" on David Shuster's MSNBC program yesterday, talking about Harry Reid and how he's managed to bollox the Blagejovich-Roland Burris situation. Apparently she's managed to upset the Village applecart a bit with her critique. Good on her.

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It probably goes without saying that I avidly support appointing Latinos to key positions within the Obama administration, but I've always been hesitant about Bill Richardson. Not only is it well known behind the Democratic scenes that he has certain horndoggy vulnerabilities in his personal life, but he's always carried a certain air of corruptibility peculiar to Western politicians. I know that scent well and it always made me leery.

So I can't say I'm sorry to see him bow out, because my gut instinct was that he spelled T-R-O-U-B-L-E for Democrats generally and the Obama Administration in particular.

His press conference today did nothing to alter that impression, especially when he flatly refused to discuss the investigation into the influence-peddling matter and wouldn't even say whether or not he had lawyered up. It all smells very fishy to me.

Note that Richardson wants us to think he had been perfectly forthcoming with the Obama transition team about the case. Turns out that's not true either.

I'm just glad all this happened before confirmation hearings arrived.

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Conservatives have a gift for pretending the obvious isn't there. Take Brit Hume yesterday for example. He gets all worked up -- even angry-seeming -- over the terrible injustice being done to Rod Blagojevich and Roland Burris.

Why? Because the prosecutor is Patrick Fitzgerald. Seems Hume harbors a grudge from one of Fitzgerald's previous prosecutions ...

It's all wrapped up in defense of Blago's selection of Burris to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat:

Hume: Why is it that he's thought to be under a taint? He's thought to be under a taint because an accusation has been made against him, not yet an indictment, by a prosecutor --

[Crosstalk]

Hume: -- Against Blagojevich, not against him -- by a prosecutor who for all of his success in court, has a propensity, as we saw in the Scooter Libby case, to say things in news conferences that he ultimately chooses or is unable to prove in court. That is all we have. We have his say-so.

Someone was saying on the air the other day, 'Well, we have the tapes.' No, we don't have the tapes. All we have is quotations from the tapes by the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, and it's not at all clear when we'll see them, what they'll show, what the context was or anything. This man is innocent until proven guilty.

That's all a stirring and noble defense of Blago, but Hume doesn't seem to realize that the breadth and depth of the case against the Illinois governor involves a great deal more than just those tapes and just the Obama Senate seat matter. And really, do we need to spell out that any selection in which there is an appearance of impropriety in the process is tainted, especially when it involves the sale of the selection?

But I gather that if you live in RightWingLand, it's difficult to imagine why anyone would consider the selection of Roland Burris tainted. After all, criminal complaints laying out a politician's desire to corruptly sell off federal appointments -- hey, that's ordinary. Routine! Everyone does that!

Is it something in the water that conservatives drink, or what?