Ok, so all this conservative hand-wringing has given me a bad case of the giggles.

Look, folks. It boils down to this. You either believe that GW Bush knows exactly what he is doing and Harriet Miers will be the type of justice that puts her personal feelings aside and does her job with the impartiality we should expect OR you think GW Bush has lost his ever-lovin’ mind by nominating another Souter.

I am still good with Harriet.

Despite popular belief, today isn’t about BBQ. When was the last time you read it? I know it has been a few years since I had so I thought today, of all days, would be a good time to refresh our memories.

IN CONGRESS JULY 4, 1776
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levey war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

VLBF (background story) is coming for a visit! Yes, VLBF is coming in tonight from Dallas to pay yours truly a visit I have been hounding him to make for over a year now. You would think a self-professed liberal elitist (he finally “came out”) would relish the chance to visit the motherland more often. This is also the first time VLBF is meeting my partner. It is probably a good thing that they didn’t meet when my partner and I first started dating, otherwise I am almost positive he would have thrown a major hissy and tried to talk me out of it. This way, it is too late and he just has to make the best of it.

Needless to say, I will be entertaining for the next few days so posting will be light and usually in the morning before I head off to work.

So, two gay Republicans, a liberal elitist, and a Border Collie walk into a bar…

Michael Rogers (a.k.a. The Gay Terrorist) looks to have had some “spies” lurking around the LCR convention judging from a silly message on his blog titled “Private Message.” Private message on a public blog? Riiight. He also posted a “see, I am a bipartisan slime ball!” note with screen shots of his email client as proof.

This guy just screams “PLEASE LOVE ME.”

**UPDATE** 2:21 PM

Now Rogers has bought advertising to scream “PLEASE LOVE ME” to an even larger audience! Gay Orbit is the involuntary host to the BlogAd Rogers has paid for. I don’t know how BlogAds work so I don’t know how it gets there, but Gay Orbit does not support Rogers or anything Rogers does so that one has got to be a real kick in the rubber parts. If you are over at Gay Orbit, resist the urge to click. The less money going into Rogers’ pocket the better.

**UPDATE** 2:32 PM

Michael @ Gay Orbit says click away (see comments) – the more people can read for themselves who Rogers is and what he is about, the better. He makes another good point – taking Rogers’ money. I suppose the more he spends to publicize his idiocy the less money he will have to spend on recording tapes.

is my ticket to political obscurity.

Charles Krauthammer doesn’t seem very impressed with the Democrats response to the elections in Iraq. Gee, I wonder why….

“At polling centers hit by explosions, survivors refused to go home, steadfastly waiting to cast their votes as policemen swept away bits of flesh.”

– The New York Times, Feb. 2, on the Iraqi elections.

Iraqis turned out to vote in great numbers, with great enthusiasm and determination. Surprise. The media have not been as surprised, noted a friend of mine, since the Nicaraguans turned out in their 1990 election to kick out the Sandinistas.

These two elections were 15 years apart, but the herd mentality of the liberal establishment never changes. They were shocked when those revolutionary darlings in Managua, magnet for long-haired Western “sandalistas” on revolutionary holiday, lost a free election — to the candidate supported by the contras.

The liberal cliche of the time was that Third World people care more about food than about freedom. This kind of contempt for the political and spiritual dignity of people who live in different circumstances never goes away. It simply gets applied serially to different sets of patronized foreigners. Today we are assured with confidence that Arabs, consumed by tribe or religion or whatever, don’t really care about freedom either.

On Jan. 30 millions of Iraqis said otherwise. They really do care about the right to speak freely and to vote secretly, the ordinary elements of democratic citizenship.

Why weren’t Iraqis dancing in the streets on the day Saddam Hussein fell, critics have asked sneeringly. Some Iraqis, the young and more reckless, did dance. Others, I suspect, were too scared, waiting to see how things turned out. Would the United States leave them hanging as in 1991? Would it leave behind a “moderate” Baathist thug in its place?

Nearly 22 months later, Iraqis seemed convinced that there would indeed be a new day. And that is when the dancing started — voters dancing and singing and celebrating, thrusting into the air their ink-stained fingers, symbol of their initiation into democracy. It was an undeniable, if delayed, feeling of liberation. Said one prominent Shiite spokesman: “We are celebrating the end of tyranny.”

As if to make a point even more definitively, it was not the suicide bombers but the voters they killed at the polls who were buried as martyrs. The remains of one suicide bomber were spat upon. Another suicide bomber, reported Iraq’s interior minister, was a child with Down syndrome. There are no words for the depths of such depravity, sending an innocent to murder innocents, dressing this poor child in explosives and then leading him to his slaughter.

These are the people whom Michael Moore, avatar of the Democratic left, calls the “Minutemen.” These are the people who Ted Kennedy, spokesman for the Democratic left, says are in a battle with the United States for “the hearts and minds of the people.”

This is both stupid and pernicious. The United States is trying to win hearts and minds; the insurgents are trying to destroy hearts and minds, along with the bodies that house them. They have no program. They have no ideology. They call themselves the “Party of Return.” Their only platform is to return themselves to power to continue the rape, pillage, torture and murder of the past 30 years. That appeals to the minority of the minority that profited from these enterprises, and to nobody else.

Their foreign allies, the Zarqawi jihadists, do have a platform, which is to destroy and outlaw democracy as a form of apostasy. The Zarqawi persuasion was put to a test on election day. It lost.

Leading Democrats are discomfited by this demonstration of Iraqi support for the Bush Doctrine. John Kerry urges that we not “overhype this election.” At the very moment when the first seed of democracy is planted, the Democratic leaders want the United States to turn its attention immediately to withdrawal. Kennedy demands a timetable. Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate leader Harry Reid demand a definitive exit strategy.

This might be terrifying to Iraqis who just risked their lives to get democracy underway, and who still remember the Baathist slaughter of tens of thousands 14 years ago when the United States urged them to rise up against their oppressors and then abandoned them. But it will not be terrifying to Iraqis, because they know that this is a different time and a different Bush. He won’t listen to the Saudis. He won’t listen to the Democrats. If the world knows anything about George W. Bush, it is that he does what he says. Iraq’s president called this talk about withdrawal “complete nonsense.” Which is why the Iraqis could dance.

How could so many Democrats be so wrong about so many things in such a short amount of time?

I was planning on leaving this up until CBS released the internal “investigation” report about the forged TANG documents, but it appears I could be waiting until next January. So here are the results:

What will become of Mary Mapes?

50% – She gets promoted
25% – She’s gonna get tossed on her ass
25% – She becomes Bill O’Reilly’s Falafel Queen

The sad thing is, she probably will end up getting promoted. It certainly doesn’t look like she is going to lose her job – as she should. Too bad for Bill though.

I certainly wouldn’t have thought I’d have 5000 hits in a year, but since this blog was started last September there have been 5000 visitors. Thank you all so much for a great 4 1/2 months! And a special thanks to those of you that keep coming back!

What it is about Hollywood celebrities that causes them to run headlong into a backlash. And you just know he’s gonna act the martyr when he gets the tongue-lashing he so richly deserves. Gere should stick to over-hyped musicals and speaking for himself.

I so wanted to make a small rodent related comment. Aren’t you proud of my restraint?