So, just a quick review of a couple of news items…

Let’s put this one to bed

In upstate New York, a woman teacher at a Catholic school pleaded guilty to statutory rape of a 16 year old student. She was caught with a 17 year old boy and that led to the “rape” investigation of the younger boy. She got 6 months, but the judge outraged everyone by calling her the “victim” of her own alcoholism, her excuse for doing the dirty with her boy students. I got a good laugh when the spokeswoman for the school said she just hoped “to put this all to bed.” LOL. Seems like a little bit of an inappropriate metaphor, but maybe that’s just me.

Wonder what they’re talking about in Houston?

Tom “The Hammer” DeLay maybe just got an anvil dropped on him. His former press aide, a guy named Scanlan, pleaded guilty yesterday to bribing public officials, including DeLay’s former “enforcer”, Rep. Ney of Ohio, who headed up the subcommittee that assigns House member offices and parking places, etc. DeLay, already facing money laundering charges in Houston over a campaign finance scam involving corporate cash ($190,000), must be wondering when former uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Scanlan will turn on him to save their own hides. The bribery charges are that Abramoff’s Indian tribe clients paid campaign contributions and gave away trips to golf in Scotland and bask in the sun of the Mariana Islands in exchange for official acts. Just so happens the Indian tribes involved are all in Texas and they wanted casino rights. Hmmmm. Millions are involved, including the $18 million in kickbacks from Scanlan to Abramoff. Now, according to insiders, the investigation is going to expand to other Congressmen and their top aides. It’s now revealed that Scanlan has been singing to prosecutors for the past 5 months. Abramoff was the top lobbyist on DeLay’s list of the “7th Street” project to use Congress and the lobbyists of D.C. to cement Republican rule of government.

Tortured Logic

The Vice President, redoubtable proponent of torture and purveyor of scandalous lies in support of a failed Iraq policy, decided yesterday that Rep. Jack Murtha, a veteran of 2 wars and recipient of a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, is a patriot after all, even after Murtha proposed a 6 month withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Cheney then went on to describe any critic of the Iraq war as giving aid and comfort to the enemy and undermining America’s military. Huh? He says Democrats are engaging in “revisionist history” when they say that the administration hyped the case for war and twisted the intelligence. Huh? Isn’t this the same Dick Cheney who was still insisting that Saddam had nuclear capacity long after it was clear the Defense Intelligence Agency had warned the dreaded aluminum tubes he alleged were for centrifuge purposes were really just missle housings? Isn’t this the Vice President who was pushing the “yellowcake” purchases allegations long after the documents were exposed as forgeries and Joe Wilson had reported that it was a fake? I know I can recall blogging (on Slate) about the so-called Mohammad Atta connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda after it was exposed as a hoax long before Cheney gave up the canard. Remember that cunt Condi Rice’s comment about mushroom clouds over American cities? Straight from the Scooter Libby playbook. Better to revise history to find the truth than to persist in a failed policy based on lies, in my book. Hope that bastard goes to Gitmo and gets assfucked by Muslims and “waterboarded” by CIA spooks.