Every article that contains “started in the Bush administration but continued and expanded by the Obama administration” is making an implicit “both sides do it” claim. The truth of the matter is this: the government is a continuous organization and changes that are made are, in fact, likely to continue.

To blame the successor equally for continuing is to suggest that every President should spend his honeymoon period undoing everything his predecessor did. Maybe it would be better to quit pretending we can bail ourselves out after making huge mistakes just because it’s theoretically possible.

The lesson here isn’t that Obama isn’t to blame for this—he is. But which Bush-era policy should he have reversed first? which last? That his priority list (and the priority list of his opponents) doesn’t match yours isn’t a reason to put the bad guys back in power to make even more change requiring repeal that might never come.

Where the fuck was Chuck Todd when the Repukes were sending fake journos into the White House, pushing fake stories that lead to war, outing Valerie Plame for her husband writing in a newspaper (or is he not in the “journalist” club?), when they fired Donahue for being against Iraq or any other number of principled stands he could have taken about this?

IOKIYAR is the fundamental rule of “journalism.”

WaPo:

Privacy protections limit searching or seizing a reporter’s work, but not when there is evidence that the journalist broke the law against unauthorized leaks. A federal judge signed off on the search warrant — agreeing that there was probable cause that Rosen was a co-conspirator.

Of course, if Obama wasn’t chasing these guys, they’d say this is what happens when a Kenyan Socialist Muslim Manchurian candidate is in office and lets our enemies win. In any event, this wasn’t some sekrit NSA spying thing. They got a warrant. If you don’t like the warrant laws, then advocate for them changing. Don’t Whitewater the President because you’re feeling shame that you had to dismiss Benghazi.

The IRS thing is nothing, as nobody could have predicted. They just played this game where we felt like spending our credibility to say Benghazi was nothing so this had to be something. Remember, they just want to impeach because he’s black.

I don’t know if this is possible or has even ever been discussed, but if the UK does bounce from the EU, why shouldn’t they join up with Canada and the US instead?

In Salon:

Voters get one vote to elect three representatives, and the top three vote-getters win election. This way, many U.S. House district would be shared between Republicans and Democrats. There would suddenly be Northeastern Republican members of Congress, which would make the Republican Party more attuned to the needs of that region. There would also be more Southern Democrats, further limiting the regional segregation we see in Congress. What’s more, voters in strongly Democratic or Republican districts will no longer feel their vote doesn’t matter. If you’re in the minority party in your district, you can still get representation in Congress.

This sounds like a great idea. But until the actual effects are understood, maybe someone ought to try and take this up at the state level first. Proportional representation sounds great, but in a lot of countries that have it there aren’t stable governments, but they have elections whenever the government loses a vote of confidence. What would happen here? We’d wait two years?

Plus, you still have to draw district lines ,they’d just have to be three times as big. And in order for this to work at all, you have to multiply the size of the House by three, or else this whole thing is for nothing in states with only one or two reps.

I’d love to see this tried in California in the lower house, since we’re so fucking avant garde with this kind of thing here. But at least we’ve demonstrated a lot about government in the process. Term limits suck and actually make politicians *more* ambitious for a career and puts party aparatchiks in more control. Direct democracy is dangerous to people’s rights and leads to irresponsible budgeting. Supermajority requirements lead to obstructionism and extortion.

Why not show that quasi-proportional representation has its downside too?

Edit: Most people don’t realize that most revolutionary ideas are out of the question and most reforms are stupid, or, worse, actually counter-productive. Improving things is hard, or it wouldn’t need improving. Opportunities to improve things are rare and shouldn’t be wasted on poorly researched, untested things that sound really cool.

Does anyone really think these three fake scandals are going to matter in a few months?

From the President on down, Democrats have stood fairly strong on Benghazi. While of course adding all of the requisite disclaimers about the loss of American life being bad, etc., they utterly reject that this was any kind of intentional wrongdoing good.

But while we’re all laughing off Benghazi, it seems our liberal brains are forcing the concession of ground on this IRS issue and the AP wiretaps. Charlie Pierce, as fiery a liberal as you could want, is up on his blog saying “Eric Holder must go.” Shit, Charlie, this is the same guy they tried to scandalize with “Fast and Furious” already. And what do you suggest? We get an acting attorney general in there while the Senate filibusters any replacement.

And on this IRS thing, we have Josh Marshall posting all day long. The Senate is going to hold hearings. Why? I mean, what else do we need to know other than they quashed it. Did anyone overpay taxes? This is a non-issue.

The only reason these “scandals” are getting any traction is because as liberals we let ourselves be shamed into reasonableness. Targeting conservative groups is bad. OK, sure. But until this has anything to do with anything other than what happened years ago, I can’t understand why it is even news.

Of course the answer is because in order to tamp down Benghazi, we have to be “reasonable” about other things. This is how they beat us. Did they ever once admit that Bush did anything wrong? No, not even when he really did.

If Obama does something patently illegal, call me. Otherwise, I’m not going to be tricked into using my liberal inclinations to defeat a liberal agenda.

And since Boehner won’t “take impeachment off the table” (another memory of liberal “reasonableness” there, right?) I look forward to the House going forward and costing themselves the 2014 election. I ain’t even mad.

If there’s another word for this, let me know. But the concept of using a party as a revolutionary vanguard to take over the government in order to bring about your sought after political, economic, and social changes is what made Leninism Leninism instead of just Russian Marxism.

This is what the GOP is doing and has been doing since 1994. They have no intention of governing, just strip mining the government for money and then sabotaging it to leave a Galt’s gulch behind where their money talks.

Otra vez.

Of course their plan has always been to impeach Obama. Anyone who didn’t believe this is naive and should not be allowed to talk about politics. That the lefty blogs are just now starting to notice concerns me.

However, as outraged as everyone will be, I say let them impeach him. They might just lose the House doing it.