TODAY'S TOP FIVE: A Vice-President of Virtue Going on a Duck Hunting Trip of Iniquity.
Drunk By Noon! If you think anything important is going to come out of Condoleezza Rice's testimony today, you're high. What's going to happen is that the inept former Chevron Oil executive is going to stick to a laboriously-prepared script, and the pushovers on the 9/11 commission aren't going to ask any tough questions. It's not a total loss, though. As The Corsair points out, this dog and pony show can easily be turned into a fun drinking game.
Tet Offensive '04 It's funny (as in "sad funny," not "ha ha funny") that US occupation officials were talking, just about a week ago, about how the insurgents in Iraq had "run out of steam." Does anyone remember that, before the Tet Offensive, US officials in Vietnam were enthusiastically announcing that we had "turned the corner"? Today's bad news: insurgents now control three cities, and have taken Japanese and South Korean hostages. On a video aired on Al Jazeera, the insurgents say they will execute the Japanese if that country doesn't pull its troops out.
Le Plotte Thickens The diplomatic standoff between France and Rwanda continues, as a French journalist has published a book featuring interviews with French soldiers who say they trained the Hutu militias that perpetrated the Rwandan genocide 10 years ago. In response, the French government leaked a story to Le Monde claiming that Rwanda's current president, Paul Kagame, ordered the assassination-by-rocket of the Rwandan president in 1994, the event that is generally believed to have set off the massacres. The French pique would be more credible if the genocide of the Tutsis hadn't been planned for years at that point.
Republicans Suddenly Coming Over All Pragmatic Quicker than you can say "quagmire," the Republican rats are beginning to desert the sinking ship that is the administration's Iraq policy. Legislators like Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel, along with pundits such as Bill O'Reilly, Joe Scarborough, and George Will are suddently finding fault with various aspects of the administration's plan, ranging from the number of American targets (er, sorry, "troops") in Iraq - they want more - to the date of the US "pullout" - June 30 is too early.
Quack Quack! It's Another "Crazy Scalia" Alert! Antonin Scalia, who would be the most embarassing justice on the Supreme Court if it weren't for Clarence Thomas, recently appeared to speek at a Mississippi high school about the Constitution. After his staff told reporters they would be allowed to tape record the speech, Scalia - who refuses to allow news photographs to be taken of him - ordered federal marshals to confiscate the reporters' tape recorders. An argument ensued between an Associated Press reporter and a federal marshal at the very same time Scalia told students "The Constitution of the United States is extraordinary and amazing. People just don't revere it like they used to." Is he pulling our leg?
-Consider Arms
