Mark A. Kilmer (the weblog)

British Prime Minister Tony Blair insists there will be no timetable/date certain… for when he will turn the government over to Gordon Brown, exchequer chancellor.

Blair ally: “”He is leaving, but New Labour must not leave with him. He wants more New Labour not less.”

Meanwhile, according to the BBC, Rupert Murdoch, a naturalized American, has warned Brown in his Australian newspaper not to get the job and call snap elections. He wants Tory leader David Cameron to have a shot to go one-on-one with the guy for the public before any vote.

Jeannine Garofalo gets the boot. She was cute. She was twisted. If she hosted a radio show in America and no one listens… goodbye.

I’m actually surprised the network is still on the air. I thought it had folded years ago.

The New York Times opines editorially on yesterday’s Hamden decision from the Supreme Court:

The message of this ruling is that the executive branch cannot continue in its remarkable insistence that because there is a war on terror, it no longer needs to follow established procedures that would subject it to scrutiny by another branch of government. The justices rejected the administration’s constant refrain — made in everything from its “enemy combatant” policies to its defense of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying — that the authority Congress granted the president to use force after Sept. 11, the exigencies of wartime, or simply the inherent powers of the presidency allow President Bush to trample on existing laws as he sees fit.

The President is doing nothing so hyperbolic, but when a paper’s editorials read like cheap dKos diaries, one expects a little off-the-deep-end moobattiness. As near as I can tell, the ruling said only that the Geneva Convention, an old treaty for old circumstances, had been converted by the Court into a new treaty covering new circumstances. It’s a bandaid and a legal leap, I think, but it is what has been done. The Geneva Convention is what the majority of the Supreme Court believe it to be.

I’m not uncomfortable at all with the Supreme Court’s ruling. The United States has laws and procedures for all people, including mutants who seek to destroy civilization, and it is a good thing that our standards are being guarded. That being said, the Times’ moonbat-rant had little to do with this notion.

The New York Times seems not to like fundamentalist Christians, which by all accounts is what Ralph Reed at least was. (He worked for Pat Robertson for a time.) He’s running for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia as we speak, and the Old Gray Drunk Lady has taken a few more editorial shots at the man, invoking the “grinning, spectral presence of Jack Abramoff, the corrupt superlobbyist.” You see, the paper has a snap of Reed on a golf course with Abramoff.

Mr. Reed said he had assurances he would not be paid with gambling profits, and indeed Mr. Abramoff was concerned that his associate’s choirboy image not seem “kind of like hypocritical,” according to one tribal witness. So the money was simply laundered through third parties — nonprofit charities and advocacy groups. The Senate report found one money conduit was the anti-taxation juggernaut of Grover Norquist, the conservative polemicist. Although he was found to have charged a fee, Mr. Norquist insisted his involvement was due to the casino tribes’ anti-taxation philosophy.

Talk about kind of like hypocritical. The Senate report recommends a separate investigation of the abuse of tax-exempt advocacy groups as shields for profiteering lobbyists. This is an excellent idea. But don’t bet Washington will be fast to enact a cure.

Grover’s made his own bed, and I’m sure the Old Gray Drunk Lady will opine about that one as the night grows older or the plot gets thicker.

The Times Op/Ed shouldn’t damage Reed. He’s running in Georgia, where voters need not hold the effete boys on the NYT’s editorial board in high esteem. Or even listen to them from a distance, for that matter.

The historical scholars at E&P have determined that most people us “My Lai” as an empty expression, so they have leant their considerable intellects to examining the incident. It can now be revealed that they have found that My Lai and Haditha were very similar, if not nearly identical.

They argue that, as with My Lai, the right wing and the rednecks will try to stop a free and objective press from presenting the truth.

If history is any guide, it will serve the press well not to be cowed by claims of bias or lack of objectivity when dealing with such serious cases as Haditha — especially since in today’s overtly partisan atmosphere most readers will likely flock to positions without close attention to the evidence.

Listen, I know these freaks want to relive Vietnam. Howard Dean wants to return to the Free Love days of the 1960’s. Counterculture, duuuude. But, as the E&P piece is forced to indicate, we do not know what happened at Haditha. Any comparisons of Haditha to anything else are thus useless, as there is nothing substantial to which to compare.

If they want to wear love beads and listen to Bob Dylan, that’s there business, but they ought not to confuse others and themselves with tortured leaps of logic.

Oh, see, I said “torture.” My Lai, maaaaan, BushLied™.

The Boomer liberals are having their last shot at relevance over at dKos, before they start doing the shuffleboard thaang, but Howard Dean digs ‘em:

Dean said he is looking for “the age of enlightenment led by religious figures who want to greet Americans with a moral, uplifting vision.”

“The problem is when we hit that ’60s spot again, which I am optimistic we’re about to hit, we have to make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes,” Dean added.

“This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius!”

(Hat tip, Dave Lucas, who blogs with me at Rathergate.com.)

The Constitutional Amendment which would have allowed Congress to pass legislation prohibiting the desecration of the American flag failed to garner the 67 votes needed to pass the U.S. Senate. The vote was 66-34, so the Dems carefully counted the beans so as to determine how many Dems could look good by voting for it without having to worry about it actually passing. Fourteen did, including Harry Reid, Prez candidate Evan Bayh, Diane Feinstein, Tim Johnson, “New Orleans Mary” Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Bob Menendez, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Jay Rockefeller, Ken Salazar, and Deb Stabenow. Mitch McConnell was the only Republican Senator voting NO.

No surprises, nothing more to see here.

Sub-host David Gregory interviewed Chris Matthews, brother of Pennsylvania Republican lieutenant governor nominee Jim Matthews, on NBC’s Today program this AM and Chris continued his Hardball jihad”

Gregory posed: “The question is, whether should we be taking their [the administration’s] word for it, that these are legal programs? Do you think the administration, any administration, has earned the right . . . to protect that kind of secret?”

Matthews: “Not this one [foreign banks]. I think that’s a fair charge.”

They’ve determined? It is a question of national security. Why don’t they tell us how to make The Bomb?

Read Mark Finkelstein’s complete report at NewsBusters.org.

Yes, I’m having a blast.

I don’t support the flag burning Amendment, but I do favor laws which would remove the criminality from assaulting a flag burner. I might not do it, but many will.

Perfect.

Former Clinton drug czar General Barry McCaffrey had a frew words with NBC’s Campbell Brown on the Today show this morning, Mark Finkelstein reports at Newsbusters.org.

He cites Carl Levin, who among others, spent some time this weekend decrying General George Casey’s troop drawdown contingencies are purely political.  McCaffrey was supposed to back this notion, but he didn’t.  Ht told Brown that the plans were both realistic and a good idea.

Brown:

“Is it fair to say — and maybe you are saying that politics is not playing a role [but] our NBC News and Wall Street Journal poll shows 50 percent of Americans saying it’s time for troops to come home. [How much is that] having an effect? Are they part of the decision making process?”

That strikes me as offensive, stating directly that the General in charge of our troops in Iraq is playing politics for this or any Administration.  What kind of general does Brown think he is?  That is the most cynical and ugly notion I’ve heard in a long time.

McCaffrey was able to dismiss the role of politics - and of the Pentagon.  His people, it seems, are telling him that President Bush is relying directly on the military for their best judgments.

Read Finkelstein’s piece.