Shooting and editing Season Four premiere of Black & Right today, so I'll be out most of the day, but hopefully will have an interesting post early this evening.

It always frustrates me how hard the government can come down on us, but our elected royalty can get away with doing whatever they damn please.

With the opening of the 111th Congress yesterday, all of Washington is tingling with the allure of a fresh start. Not so fast. We've got some leftover business from the 110th Congress — namely, Chris Dodd's July 2008 promise to release the details of his sweetheart loans from Countrywide Financial.

The Connecticut Senator got favored treatment from the subprime mortgage purveyor, even as he was a power broker on the Banking Committee that regulates the industry. When the news broke, the Senator first denied that he sought or expected preferential treatment. He later admitted that he knew he was considered a VIP at the firm but claimed he thought it was "more of a courtesy." He also promised the Connecticut press that he'd come clean with the documents and details of the loans. But six months later — nada, zip, nothing.

The rest of the press corps may have moved on, but we'd still like to know.

You're not alone.

I can't even begin to imagine the mass screeching that would ensue if President Bush had all the ethics issues that have plagued Barack Obama since he started to involve Chicago and the Clintonistas into his pending administration. But as we're now collectively picking on the ethics-challenged, get ready for a plethora of whiny spins to be made on Democrats' behalf.

More and more these days, my morning newspaper reads like an ensemble comedy of errors cast entirely with Democrats: Bill Richardson probed! Blago busted! Charlie Rangel investigated! Eliot Spitzer ruined! Kwame Kilpatrick jailed! Bill "Freezer" Jefferson indicted! … and so on. Ugh. Are the Democrats — so recently awarded power as the clean alternative to the dirty DeLay generation of Republicans — developing their own "culture of corruption" problem? Or could they, at least, be effectively painted as corrupt for the GOP's political gain in 2010 or 2012?

Thanks for the refresher. I'd begun to lose count.

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Ooooh, what a juicy little turn of events. The popular mantra is that EVERYTHING gone bad in the world can be laid at the feet of George W. Bush.

It is, indeed, a new day.

Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader lashed out at President-elect Barack Obama in a new audio message Tuesday, accusing him of not doing anything to stop Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip, according to an intelligence monitoring center. The recording purportedly by Ayman al-Zawahiri was al-Qaida's first comments on the Gaza crisis since Israel launched its offensive against the Islamic militants of Hamas on Dec. 27.

In the comments, which were posted on a militant Web site and obtained by the SITE Monitoring Service, al-Zawahiri described Israel's actions in Gaza as a "crusade against Islam and Muslims" and called it "Obama's gift to Israel" before he takes office later this month.

"This is Obama whom the American machine of lies tried to portray as the rescuer who will change the policy of America," al-Zawahiri said, according to SITE. "He kills your brothers and sisters in Gaza mercilessly and without affection."

Those liberal talking points do go a long way. It must suck when bonehead uses them against you.

Oh well….

After eight years of pummeling, what would one expect?

The "Race relations" thing though, if you listen to the punditry, is confusing.

Two things. It's never a good idea to call a woman a "skank" or a "ho", and I always thought that one loses certain protections once one became a public person.

As I said, it's never a good idea to call a woman a "skank" or a "ho"…

Liskula Cohen, 36, is seeking a court order that would force Google to reveal the person or persons behind the postings so she can hold them accountable with a defamation lawsuit.

The anonymous bloggers have "posted entries, including photographs, captions to the photographs and commentary solely about Liskula Cohen that describe her as a 'skank' and a 'ho,' " her filing in Manhattan Supreme Court says.

Cohen hopes to at least force a level playing field by exposing her tormenter.

If that's the worse she's been called, Ms. Cohen needs to get a life.

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On the Today Show, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow implied that the United States wouldn't do such bad things to innocent people under a Leon Panetta-led intelligence infrastructure.

She may want to have someone revise those so-well-recited talking points.

Liberals might be in for a nasty shock with Leon Panetta, the man Barack Obama wants to lead the CIA. The selection of the former White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton has been welcomed by many Democrats for his denunciations of torture and all round management abilities.

But according to one former agent, Michael Scheuer, the extraordinary rendition programme that has so tainted the agency during the Bush administration actually began in the Clinton administration, when Panetta would, or should, have been fully aware of it.

Whoops.

Got a recitation for that, Rachel?

Barack Obama flat out lied about "hope" and "change".

President-elect Barack Obama took big money from a man at the center of a federal probe that has forced one of Obama's top Cabinet picks to withdraw.

Financial records show the Obama campaign got more than $30,000 from California financier David Rubin, the target of an investigation into donations and possible "pay-to-play" deals involving New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Obama's pick for commerce secretary.

There was hardly any "change" involved with his campaign. It's always been about dollar bills, no matter where they came from.

When you opt to dump Ann Coulter because she may say something unkind about your beloved Barack Obama, (and that's not what the American people want to hear…) replace her with an Air America alumnus so she can bash the outgoing George W. Bush (because that's what's said out in the open at the Peacock net).

Let's change the subject, if possible. On Obama's choice of Leon Panetta as CIA Director…

Well, I think that he made a bold choice in Leon Panetta, and we have seen from Barack Obama a lot of leadership by building consensus, by making people not disagree with him about important and hot-button issues. But on Panetta that was an, "elections have consequences" moment. If you were in the Bush administration and which, with, with warrantless wiretapping and enhanced interrogation, torture. With rendition, with these other controversial policies in the intelligence community, that's not going to be a career asset. And if you were a Democratic senator in an intelligence oversight role, while all these things were happening, your objections may not be the most important thing for this new president looking to make a clean break.
— Rachel Maddow, The Today Show, 1/6/09

If all these liberals are such independent thinkers (especially considering what MSNBC must be paying for Maddow's musings), how come they all recite the same debunked crap? Can she name anyone, aside from her own paranoid narrow ass, that's been warrantless wiretapped, enhanced interrogated, and tortured?

I get tired of asking questions and getting no answers.

On one hand, we complain about illegals disrespecting our sovereign border, then we throw the very men and women enforcing our borders under the bus.

Last week, Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Charlie Dent became another influential voice calling on President Bush to pardon two former border patrol agents convicted of shooting an unarmed drug smuggler who was trying to escape across the US-Mexico border. Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean are serving more than 10 years each for shooting Osvaldo Davila in the buttocks while he was fleeing from an abandoned van loaded with 750 pounds of marijuana.

The officers, pleading not guilty, argued that they thought Davila, a Mexican with a record of drug smuggling, was armed. Nevertheless, they were convicted two years ago in federal court in Texas of assault, civil rights violations and trying to cover up the shooting. In fact, the officers were unaware that the suspect was shot because he made good his escape across the border the night of the incident. Davila, given full immunity for his testimony, was the witness that convicted them.

Before President Bush pardons a liberal or two to give that New Tone thing a final bow, let's hope he remembers the millions of us who elected him twice, and show some compassion to Scooter and two federal law enforcement officers who have been imprisoned, thanks to an opportunistic assistant US attorney and a slimy Mexican drug dealer whose word was more acceptable than our agents.