Cheney Again Hides Behind Presidential Power

CHENEY LOOKS SICKLY ON MORNING TALK SHOW

Dick Cheney sounded a bit too much like President Nixon this morning with Bob Schieffer. If you have been watching television lately you might have noticed ads for the movie "Frost/Nixon" featuring actor Frank Langhella impersonating Nixon saying, "It's legal if the president does it."

On Face the Nation, a gaunt and raspy-voiced Cheney said something similar in an exchange where the veep referenced Abraham Lincoln's controversial suspension of habeus corpus during the Civil War. (Click here to watch the clip from rawstory.com.)

"It certainly was in the sense he wasn't impeached," said Cheney, "And it was a wartime measure that he took that I think history says today, yeah, that was probably a good thing to do."

Cheney's response is an awkward version of "it's only illegal, if you get caught," and further illustrates the Bush-Cheney chutzpah of the last eight years will continue. Shortly after the Abu Ghraib disaster and massive flubbing of Katrina, the administration has, in a sense, thrown in the towel in regards to convincing the public their policies are beneficial in the short term. Instead, both the president and Cheney resort to using rhetoric from the future--history will vindicate us!--it possibly could, but likely will not, but it's all they have.

At a few points in this interview, Cheney is downright unapologetic about some of the policies he and the president have supported. One could almost see such sanguine answers as evidence used in the court of law. Hopefully lunatics on the left save their energy and focus it on taking advantage of the monumental opportunity afforded by the last eight years and remake the nation in a progressive image of equality and domestic tranquility.

Puppy Dog The Republican Hunter

NYT'S KRISTOL TALKS TOUGH; RUNS FROM OBAMA'S PUPPY

It's a dog eat dog world out there for Republicans.

William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, writes in the New York Times op/ed page his whole perception of the next four (or eight) years was transformed by the mere mention of a puppy.

President-elect Barack Obama's intention to buy his daughters a puppy during his speech last Tuesday night apparently stopped in its tracks Kristol's belief that the U.S. is still a center-right country and the loss was attributed to a huge anti-Bush vote.

"I gulped," he writes.

And so did I. According to Kristol, the canine portion of Obama's speech could be the most famous since Richard Nixon vouched for Checkers the dog. (Click here to watch Nixon's "Checkers” speech.)

Here, in a few sentences, Obama did the following: He deepened his bond with every dog lover in America. He identified with every household that’s tried to figure out what kind of dog to get. He touched every parent with a kid allergic to pets. He showed compassion by preferring a dog from a shelter. And he demonstrated a dry and slightly politically incorrect wit by commenting that “a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me.

What Kristol is actually afraid of is President Bush with a brain; not just the guy you would have a beer with, but the neighbor you would rather invite over for a beer and a barbecue with the family.

For Republicans, it has come to this: posture that the country has not really changed and foster the belief the election of Obama was one entirely fictional protest vote against eight years of Bush.

A staunch conservative like Kristol finds himself confident in the face of the further loss of the new Latino voting bloc, the beginning of a Democratic Southern realignment, the loss of white men, the rise of new first-time voters but it's the sad puppy eyes of the Obama's future pet that has him in shaking in his boots.