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While I think it is premature to write an obituary for the Republican Party, it's hard not to watch this clip and not come to the conclusion that the party is in critical condition.

What is a consensus amongst the talking heads is that the GOP is lost today: no leader, no clear idea of what values to champion, no clear idea if it should be centrist or move even further to the right. Of all the things that the Bush administration destroyed in their term of office, their own party is probably the most surprising.

And who is it poised to rise again like Lazarus to prove the divine right of the GOP, according to those Beltway insiders? Newt "Love means never having to say I'm sorry to my other wives" Gingrich. Even Chris Matthews cannot hold back his patented guffaw at the thought.

Ultimately, the group agrees that it remains to be seen whose idea will resonate with the general public, but it appears that no one currently vying for the top role has been able to offer an idea that we haven't seen for the last 30 years. So have I got this straight? No obvious leader, rudderless and no new ideas?

Awwww....couldn't happen to a more deserving party.

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One of the more laughably adolescent and petulant aspect of Bush's Farewell Legacy Tour is the refusal to examine any aspect of his presidency, brushing it off with a "Well, you may not agree with me, but you have to agree that I made tough decisions."

Maybe it's not so surprising that the guy who got to Harvard and Yale on legacy and who needed to be bailed out by Daddy and friends on every business he attempted thinks that he deserves credit for merely sticking it out and not pushing off "hard" decisions to others. Certainly, that has been his modus operandi before public office. But clearly, that excuse isn't flying with the media any longer, as exemplified from this segment of The Chris Matthews Show, which highlight the fatal flaw of Bush's reasoning: you don't get credit for making the tough decisions, you get credit for making the right decisions.

KAY: Of course he had to face tough decisions. Because that’s the job of the American president, you have to face tough decisions. And you have to face them well and make the right decisions. I think the trouble is in all the interviews he’s given—these farewell interviews—he still really hasn’t answered satisfactorily the central question of his presidency: Why did he invade Iraq? It’s not enough to say it was a tough decision, so I made it, you have to say it was the right decision. [..]

RATHER: As far as it goes, it’s a fair estimate that great presidencies are made out of crises. If you come up with the right answers. The business of tough decisions, every president has tough decisions to make. Herbert Hoover had tough decisions to make. He made some of the wrong ones. Gen. Grant, for all his generalship when he was president, made tough decisions, but made the wrong decisions. This is the way history goes, fairly or unfairly. It seems to me, you make the wrong decisions, you pay the price. [..]

WHITAKER: Chris, you know, Bush likes to think of himself as the Great Decider, but I think one of the things that history is going to record is how indecisive he was at key moments. You think about Katrina, and handling that crisis. You think about the current economic crisis, that he’s leaving and how he was sort of asleep at the switch as that all happened. And even on Iraq, even though he was decisive on going to war, he was incredibly indecisive about the aftermath of the war. And I think that that’s the root of a lot of the problems we’ve had there.

Wow, you know, these Media Elite types are actually starting to sound like us DFHs, aren't they? Too bad their honesty only kicked in as Bush got kicked out.

Transcripts below the fold

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The wingnuts have been proudly displaying Dan Rather's scalp on their trophy wall ever since they chased him out of CBS with the "Memogate" nonsense. But this particular scalp may be about to turn out not to be so dead after all.

Last year Rather filed a lawsuit against CBS that mostly drew derisive snorts from both the wingnuts and the Village Idiots, but which in fact promises to be very interesting indeed if the trial takes place. As things stand now, it's set to go to trial in February.

But already some noteworthy items are seeping out.

Felix Gillette at the New York Observer got a look at some of the documents and found a list of names that CBS executives had compiled for its "independent panel" to examine the claims against Rather.

The list includes Mr. Boccardi's name as well such seemingly reasonable potential candidates as David Gergen, Gene Roberts (former managing editor of The New York Times) and Dick Wald (former president of NBC News).

Then things get a little bit more conservative. Under the category "others" are the names of potential candidates such as… Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh.

Herein, CBS’s full list of "others":

* William Buckley

* Robert Novak

* Kate O’Beirne

* Nicholas Von Hoffman

* Tucker Carlson

* Pat Buchanan

* George Will

* Lou Dobbs

* Matt Drudge

* Robert Barkley

* Robert Kagan

* Fred Barnes

* William Kristol

* John Podhoretz

* David Brooks

* William Safire

* Bernard Goldberg

* Ann Coulter

* Andrew Sullivan

* Christopher Hitchens

* PJ O’Rourke

* Christopher Caldwell

* Elliot Abrams

* Charles Krauthammer

* William Bennett

* Rush Limbaugh

At the very bottom of the list, someone wrote in one more name. "Roger Ailes."

What, Torquemada wasn't available?

Eli has more.

When asked for his opinion on the whole Jesse Jackson/Barack Obama dust up, Dan Rather talks about his admiration for the legendary civil rights activists, and says Osama bin Laden wouldn't be possible without him. Say what?

Download | play Download | play (h/t Bill W)

I can understand accidentally mixing up Obama and Osama. It happens. What I don't understand is how Dan Rather could make the mistake of actually calling him the full Osama bin Laden. More astonishingly, how can the entire"Morning Joe" cast sit there and not correct him? Stupefying.

Media Bloodhound has been tracking the ABC/Alexis Debat Scandal and had a few questions for ABC News on the integrity of their sourcing...

The morale? Caveat emptor when it comes to trusting ABC's anonymously sourced news. Hear that, Brian Ross?

In related news, former Fox News affiliate anchor (and my former neighbor) Leslie Griffith cheers on Dan Rather for standing up against the White House pressure against negative reporting.

Daily Darfur: Activists pressuring China, host of the 2008 Olympics, as they are "not only the premier supplier of weapons to Khartoum regime, [they have] provided unstinting support to the Sudanese government." Um, you mean, like our very own CIA?

Not clicking on those links, folks? Hey, even kids know Darfur doesn't sell.

PBH blog: Michelle Malkin, American Brain Trust.

Connecting the Dots: Dan Rather is depleting the good-will balance in his Journalistic Hall of Fame account.

Holy Crap! A Christian and an atheist have a civil conversation. But wait, that's happening all the time at Blog against Theocracy. And a holy crap classic for Father's Day: Ian Frazier's The Lamentations of the Father.

guest round-up by Blue Gal

Dan Rather retires and the religious right takes its shots!

There can be many things said about Dan Rather, but this one was the most ridiculous we heard all day.

Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition appeared on "Hardball" with Marty Kaplan of the USC Annenberg School of Communications and took her shots at Dan.

Video

Andrea: "I don't think he likes Americans!"

Matthews: "Dan Rather doesn't like Americans?"

Andrea: 'I don't think so. I think he's a grumpy old guy."

Marty: "Andrea, you just made my point about the right wing as well as I could ever possibly make it."

Here are some of the 'values" of TVC:

"Right To Life We also believe the government has the power to take the lives of those who murder others ...

Pornography: Pornography is a progressive addiction that ruins the conscience of the person. Frequently, this person acts out his sexual fantasies by molesting children, raping girls, and committing other sexual crimes—including murder.

Discrimination And Tolerance: We are not tolerant of behaviors that destroy individuals, families, and our culture. Individuals may be free to pursue such behaviors as sodomy, but we will not and cannot tolerate these behaviors. They frequently lead to death.

Love And Hate: The Bible teaches us that we are to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us.

First of all Power Line is not part of Pajamas Media as far as I know. (I believe they are part of the Blog News Service of PM) Durbin reacts to Mirengoff's parroting of Karl Rove's talking point.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

Atrios:

DURBIN: I just don’t understand why they can’t make what modifications in the law might be necessary, but instead are claiming powers that go way beyond what the statute allows and way beyond what anyone voted for on September 14, 2001.

Q: But the attorney general says FISA allows intercepts that are otherwise authorized by statue. And he also says that that was authorized in the authorization of force act.

DURBIN: That's his argument. You've just repeated it.

(Isn't it interesting how Power Line usually just repeats the company line ocer issues like these?)

Q: Well, why don't – if you disagree with that argument, why don't you go on the floor and try to get a vote and have the Senate say whether or not the authorization of force - with all force necessary-

DURBIN: No, you've got it wrong. You've got it wrong. I don't know - who do you work for, incidentally?

Q: Powerline and Pajamas Media.

DURBIN: Jamas Media?

Q: Pajamas Media.

DURBIN: Pajama Media?

Q: And Powerline.

DURBIN: Okay, I'm sorry I wasn't familiar with your publication. But I will just tell you this: the argument is the Constitution spells out the powers of the president, as well as the powers of the legislative branch and the judicial branch. And statutes will be followed if, in fact, they put exclusive authority. That's was FISA does. It creates the word "“exclusive means" - exclusive authority. And they are reading more into it now than the statute obviously allows.

Q: But did you hear Gonzales say-

DURBIN: I'll check out Pajamaline, but I'm not familiar with your publication.

Q: Yeah. Dan Rather knows something about it.

Poor Bernie, Donny Deutsch's appearance has left him so unhappy. Those angry liberal elites. How long did it take him to run to FOX and cry out? He was on O'Reilly last night and sang his song of woe. He made various charges and said they edited him. When O'Reilly asked " They edited you?" Bernie followed that up with "nobody on the panel read my book."

So I guess they didn't edit you. Bernie said they edited Donny Deutsch's time down so he didn't look foolish. He would have had a valid claim against the show if they edited Bernie's dialogue in the segment to make him look foolish. (He does a good job all by himself) Goldberg didn't make that claim. Then poor, sad Bernie compared his appearance to Judge Bork. Ego much? I wouldn't waste any bandwidth on the segment.

Newshounds has some more from the O'Reilly segment: "Maybe it's Goldberg's unbelievable gall and total inability to put himself in someone else's place. Does he even realize that 100 people have been brutally insulted by his book. He had no right to humiliate these people and then parade around Fox collecting kudos. This book was nasty and cruel and yet he accuses the "liberal elite" of being mean."

James Wolcott has a few choice words for Bernie: And if I may venture a modest editorial opinion of Goldberg and his pseudo-book, his inclusion of former CBS colleague Dan Rather on the list--at #12, no less--shows what a backstabbing little careerist fuckrat he is.