Legal Fictions

The Bush administration's dumbest legal arguments of the year.

By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Friday, Dec. 28, 2007, at 6:32 PM ET

This time last year, I offered up a top 10 list of the most appalling civil-liberties violations by the Bush administration in 2006. The grim truth is, not much has changed. The Bush administration continues to limit our basic freedoms, conceal its own worst behavior, and insist that it does all this in order to make us more free. In that spirit, it seemed an opportune moment to commemorate the administration's worst legal justifications and arguments of the year. And so I humbly offer this new year's roundup: The Bush Administration's Top 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007.

Katha Pollitt: Bill Kristol Gets New York Times Op-Ed Slot

Just shoot me. First, it was Sam Tanenhaus, conservative editor of the New York Times Book Review being put in charge of the News of the Week in Review section. That means one conservative will determine how politics,culture and ideas are covered in TWO of the most important sections of the supposedly liberal newspaper of record. Now, says the Huffington Post, the Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will be writing a weekly op-ed column. That's Bill Kristol ,Fox commentator , editor of the the Murdochian agitprop factory Weekly Standard, George W. Bush's propagandist in chief, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, relentless promoter of the war in Iraq , ideological bully and thug. This is the man who blamed american liberals for the Khmer Rouge and the Ayatollah Khomeini (!), who will say just about anything, however bizarre or illogical or wild or (I'm guessing) cynical, to push the only ideas in his head: everything bad is the fault of Democrats and never mind the question, war is the answer.

Katha Pollitt: Taking Care of Caretaking

This morning, TakeCareNet released the results of its survey of presidential candidates' positions on 26 public policies related to work, family, and caregiving. Co-sponsored by eight other organizations, including the Labor Project for Working Families, Momsrising.org, and the National Council of Women's Organizations, the survey addresses the "silent crisis of care": the absence of social support for working families (I know, I know, I hate that moralistic multi-focus-grouped phrase) that has made us a nation of stressed-out parents, daycare workers on poverty wages, and children who aren't getting the high-quality attention and stimulation they need.

Digby: Don't Cry For Me Iowa Caucus

I wrote earlier about the Saturday FoxNews Greedheads who had a fit over the radical socialist message Clinton was ramming down the unwilling throats of America with her chilling Christmas ad, but they aren't the only rabid right wingers in a lather. Guess who this is: Rush? Hannity? Michael Savage?

Torture — what's it good for?

Posted on: December 29, 2007 10:09 AM, by PZ Myers

One little post about waterboarding seems to have stirred up the mob, but at least the majority seem to agree that it is torture. How could it not be? It's a process for causing pain and suffering, nothing more. At least the commenters here, even the ones I disagree with most strongly, are more honest than our politicians, many of whom seem to be in a state of denial.

But then the argument becomes whether torture is a useful procedure. I'm going to surprise some people and agree that torture is an extremely powerful tool. It's just useless for gathering information. There's just no way you can trust information gotten while ripping somebody's fingernails off with a pair of pliers — they'll scream anything to get you to stop.

Daily Kos: Greenspan Attacks Edwards...The REAL WAR in ON.

by Shipjack
Thu Dec 20, 2007 at 10:20:43 PM PST

The real war emerges. The real war showed itself this Sunday the moment the first poll ever showed Edwards with a lead. Greenspan attacked on Edwards and Populism on national television (very unusual for Greenspan). The arrogance and pressures of international capital back at work in the United States starting with ABC pushing Alan Greenspan as rebuttal to Edwards Sunday morning on George Steph. This should not surprise, but for those that perhaps didn't notice, pay attention. The devil is certainly in the details in this case. Greenspan already promoted his book a month ago. What would call for such a prized appearance on ABC Sunday morning? Certainly it's not to speak on the month old mortgage crisis he caused with his failure to implement early regulatory measures after he was warned. He's been chatting the crisis up for weeks. George's first question to Alan was: "What do you think of Edwards economic plan?". Canned all the way. It was a bad moment for George and ABC. Call it an in-kind contribution to the other mainstream Federal Reserve approved candidates, because that is exactly what it was.

America’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Agencies

Posted on Nov 29, 2007
James Harris and Josh Scheer

"Spying Blind” author Amy Zegart gives Truthdig a status report on America’s intelligence agencies and explains why our intelligence system is so broken and why our democracy may be to blame.

Listen to this interview.

Transcript:

James Harris: This is Truthdig. James Harris with Josh Scheer. We’re talking to the author of “Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11.” Her name is Amy Zegart and she’s on the way to the airport so we’re going to take a few moments of her time to get some information and to learn more about this book. Amy, one of the things that critics say you do really well in this book is deconstruct the myth that national security agencies work reasonably well to serve national interests. I was under the impression that the NSA, the FBI and the CIA did a reasonably decent job at protecting us. Tell me what you learned in the writing of this book that should lead me to believe something very different.

Digby: Hurry Up And Veto

Hey, remember this?

President Bush on Thursday called on Congress to approve billions of dollars in additional funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before lawmakers leave for their Christmas break.

[...]

This is bizarre. Steve Benen flags this AP report which says that Iraqi funds are already exempted from such lawsuits. What's going on?

With Bhutto gone, does Bush have a Plan B?

Bush's failed policies in Pakistan, a nuclear power that al-Qaida still uses to plot against the West, threatens U.S. security more than Iraq ever did.

By Juan Cole

Dec. 27, 2007 | The assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Thursday provoked rioting in Islamabad and Karachi, with her supporters blaming President Pervez Musharraf, while he pointed his finger at Muslim extremists. The renewed instability in Pakistan came as a grim reminder that the Bush administration has been pursuing a two-front war, neither of which has been going well. Bush's decision to put hundreds of billions of dollars into an Iraq imbroglio while slighting the effort to fight al-Qaida, rebuild Afghanistan, and move Pakistan toward democracy and a rule of law has been shown up as a desperate and unsuccessful gamble. The question is whether President Musharraf now most resembles the shah of Iran in 1978. That is, has his authority among the people collapsed irretrievably?

Defaults moving beyond sub-prime

By E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 28, 2007

Thought the mortgage meltdown was just a sub-prime affair? Think again. There's another time bomb waiting to explode, experts say: risky loans made to people with good credit.

So-called pay-option adjustable-rate mortgages, or option ARMs, were the easiest and most profitable home loans for lenders and brokers to make for much of this decade. Last year, they accounted for about 9% of the volume of all mortgages made in the U.S. and were especially popular in California, Florida and Nevada -- states where home prices rose the most during the housing boom and are now falling most sharply.

Glenn Greenwald: Peggy Noonan is a serious "grown-up"

In her Wall St. Journal column today, Peggy Noonan offers up a Santa-like checklist of which presidential candidates are "reasonable" and which ones aren't. In describing the attributes that Americans want in a President, she says: "I claim here to speak for thousands, millions." On behalf of the throngs for whom she fantasizes she speaks, Noonan proclaims: "We are grown-ups . . . We'd like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it."

This grown-up then proceeds to pronounce that Romney, McCain, Giuliani, Thompson and Duncan Hunter are all "reasonable" -- as are Biden, Dodd, Richardson and Obama (though too young and inexperienced to be President) -- but this is what she says about John Edwards:

John Edwards is not reasonable. . . . .[W]e can't have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can't.

Paul Krugman: Trouble With Trade

While the United States has long imported oil and other raw materials from the third world, we used to import manufactured goods mainly from other rich countries like Canada, European nations and Japan.

But recently we crossed an important watershed: we now import more manufactured goods from the third world than from other advanced economies. That is, a majority of our industrial trade is now with countries that are much poorer than we are and that pay their workers much lower wages.

Bin Laden Killed Bhutto? How Blind Can We Be?

The shorthand being bandied about in the news that al-Qaeda is responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is so sloppy, so lacking in nuance or understanding of the dynamics of Pakistan, and so self-centered in its reference to America's enemy as to be almost laughable.

Several U.S. defense and intelligence experts are quoted today dismissing even the possibility that President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani government forces, or other domestic elements could be involved, a conclusion that flies in the face of the country's history and ignores the obvious beneficiaries.

Benazir Bhutto: An Age of Hope Is Over

By Barbara Crossette, The Nation
Posted on December 28, 2007, Printed on December 28, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/71810/

Nineteen years ago at the end of December, Benazir Bhutto, fresh from her first, exhilarating election victory and newly sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan, met Rajiv Gandhi, the youthful prime minister of India, for talks in Islamabad. She was 35, he was 44. There was obvious good will, almost intimacy, between them. The air was full of promise and hope that these two modernizing scions of dominant political families would turn decades of war and hostility between their nations into a new era of peace.

Is the Hydrogen Age Just Around the Corner?

By Jerry Brown and Rinaldo Brutoco and James Cusumano, Ode
Posted on December 28, 2007, Printed on December 28, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/67954/

You may think hydrogen power is some futuristic fantasy, fit only for science-fiction writers. Or, at best, you might consider it a promising technology that won't be ready for prime time for another 40 to 50 years. If so, think again. In a special edition on "Best Inventions 2006," Time magazine praises the decision by Shanghai-based Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies "to design and market the H-racer, a 6-inch-long toy car that does what Detroit still can't. It runs on hydrogen extracted from plain tap water, using the solar-powered hydrogen station."

Who Strangled the FDA?

It's possible to read all 300-plus horrifying pages of a new Food and Drug Administration subcommittee report describing the agency's slow asphyxiation by prolonged budgetary constraints without learning who is responsible for its decline.

Subcommittee member and attorney Peter Barton Hutt, who served as FDA chief counsel during the Nixon and Ford administrations, pointed his finger at the American public in his own supplemental contribution to the report: "It is not a problem caused by partisan politics. The administrations of President Clinton and President Bush have been equally unresponsive to FDA's needs. ... The country cannot withhold the requisite scientific resources from FDA and then complain that the agency is incapable of meeting our expectations."

Ex-Intel Official: Don't Be So Quick to Blame al-Qaeda, Musharraf for Bhutto Killing

By Spencer Ackerman - December 27, 2007, 4:31PM

Here I take my lumps like everyone else. Throughout the day I've either said that the most likely culprit for the Bhutto assassination is "the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda," or I've reported the j'accuse issued by others that Pervez Musharraf is in some way culpable. But what if that's all wrong? According to a former intelligence official with deep experience on Pakistan, there's a third, and perhaps more likely culprit: internally-focused Pakistani Islamist militants without significant links to al-Qaeda.

Deep-sea species' loss could lead to oceans' collapse, study suggests

The loss of deep-sea species poses a severe threat to the future of the oceans, suggests a new report publishing early online on December 27th and in the January 8th issue of Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press. In a global-scale study, the researchers found some of the first evidence that the health of the deep sea, as measured by the rate of critical ecosystem processes, increases exponentially with the diversity of species living there.

U.S. Troops to Head to Pakistan

Beginning early next year, U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units, according to defense officials involved with the planning.

These Pakistan-centric operations will mark a shift for the U.S. military and for U.S. Pakistan relations. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the U.S. used Pakistani bases to stage movements into Afghanistan. Yet once the U.S. deposed the Taliban government and established its main operating base at Bagram, north of Kabul, U.S. forces left Pakistan almost entirely. Since then, Pakistan has restricted U.S. involvement in cross-border military operations as well as paramilitary operations on its soil.

Navy JAG Resigns Over Torture Issue

Knight Ridder | December 27, 2007

"It was with sadness that I signed my name this grey morning to a letter resigning my commission in the U.S. Navy," wrote Gig Harbor, Wash., resident and attorney-at-law Andrew Williams in a letter to The Peninsula Gateway last week. "There was a time when I served with pride ... Sadly, no more."

Williams' sadness stems from the recent CIA videotape scandal in which tapes showing secret interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives were destroyed.

Did Bush Watch the Torture Tapes?

The Times (London) Washington correspondent, Sarah Baxter, reporting with a summary of the developments in the case involving the CIA’s destruction of recordings of the treatment of Abu Zabaydah, points to the growing belief in Washington that President Bush viewed the torture tapes. Baxter reports:

It emerged yesterday that the CIA had misled members of the 9-11 Commission by not disclosing the existence of the tapes, in potential violation of the law. President George W Bush said last week he could not recall learning about the tapes before being briefed about them on December 6 by Michael Hayden, the CIA director. “It looks increasingly as though the decision was made by the White House,” said Johnson. He believes it is “highly likely” that Bush saw one of the videos, as he was interested in Zubaydah’s case and received frequent updates on his interrogation from George Tenet, the CIA director at the time.

CIA Jet Carrying Four Tons of Cocaine Also Made Trips to Gitmo

Posted by Manila Ryce, The Largest Minority on December 27, 2007 at 12:43 PM.

Other Western countries like Great Britain are quite honest about their history of drug trading, but we still engage in self-censorship, even amongst the Left, when it comes to acknowledging that similar activities have been carried out by the CIA in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War and Latin America during the Iran-Contra Affair. Perhaps the reason why the CIA’s well-documented role in the global drug trade is never really acknowledged is because it never really ended.

The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

By Ali Eteraz, HuffingtonPost.com
Posted on December 27, 2007, Printed on December 27, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/71765/

Benazir Bhutto, a two time former Prime Minister of Pakistan, and one of the leading voices of democratization, was assassinated in a suicide bombing in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near the capital, Islamabad. She was departing a political rally with her closest political advisors, in preparation of the January elections. Approximately thirty other people were killed. Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the killing.

Details about the attack are slowly coming via Pakistani media. The bomber is described as a lone-individual who, before exploding himself, opened fire on Benazir's van. Pakistani officials have confirmed (to the BBC) that she was killed by a gun-shot to the neck. In fact, Pakistan's GEO-TV is currently panning to a picture of a handgun sitting (found quite miraculously) amidst the debris, presumably the one that killed Ms. Bhutto. However, some journalists are uncertain whether it was a gun shot, or pellets from the bomb, that killed her.

And Justice for All: We Must Reverse Our Zeal to Incarcerate

by Nomi Prins

The movie Atonement is a heart-breaking love-story, a historical WWII saga. Without giving away the ending, which must be seen to be adequately felt, it tells the tale of two lovers’ lives irrevocably changed by false testimony against one of them - for a crime he did not commit. Thus, it’s also a condemnation of unreliable witnesses, the willingness of people to believe the worst, particularly of those in a lower economic-class, and the havoc that a false accusation and conviction can wreak upon human life. It’s a film and message that every judge, jury member, and prosecutor should see and consider before convicting or sentencing anyone accused of a crime.On December 10th, the United States Supreme Court voted 7-2 to recognize a gross injustice with respect to sentencing guidelines which disproportionately penalize those convicted of crack versus cocaine related crimes. The disparity gives equal punishment to a person caught with 5 grams of crack (a poor person’s cocaine) and one caught with 500 grams of coke (a drug dealer’s amount). In their validation of a federal district judge’s below-guideline sentence for a crack case, the Supreme Court reconfirmed the 2005 Booker ruling that federal judges could have more discretion in levying below-guideline sentences. They did not rule on the validity of the guidelines themselves.

Glenn Greenwald: Favorite quotes of 2007

One of the few things I dislike more than end-of-the-year "looking back" lists is the incessant chatter and worthless speculation over the upcoming primaries. But that chatter and speculation is inundating everything. Thus, I offer some of my favorite quotes of 2007:

"When I talk to senior government officials on the phone, it's my own policy -- our conversations are confidential. If I want to use anything from that conversation, then I will ask permission" --

Tim Russert, under oath at the Lewis Libby trial, citing the textbook function of a government propagandist to explain his role as a "journalist."

Poor Americans in the United States suffer hidden burden of parasitic and other neglected diseases

In an article titled "Poverty and Neglected Diseases in the ‘Other’ America," Professor Peter Hotez (George Washington University and the Sabin Vaccine Institute) says that there is evidence that the parasitic diseases toxocariasis, cysticercosis and toxoplasmosis as well as other neglected infections are very common in the United States, especially among poor and underrepresented minority populations living in inner cities and poor rural areas.

Juan Cole: Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2007

10. Myth: The US public no longer sees Iraq as a central issue in the 2008 presidential campaign.

In a recent ABC News/ Washington Post poll, Iraq and the economy were virtually tied among voters nationally, with nearly a quarter of voters in each case saying it was their number one issue. The economy had become more important to them than in previous months (in November only 14% said it was their most pressing concern), but Iraq still rivals it as an issue!

News of Social Security's death exagerrated

Scroll past the satire to get to the meat of the article at the link--Dictynna.

Baby boomers won't break it, and problems are easily solved

Sunday, December 23, 2007

By Bob Moos, The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS -- On her blog, Cassandra Devine balks at the prospect of paying for the baby boomers' Social Security benefits.

Her "modest proposal" for sparing the younger generation that expense: Pay retirees to commit suicide.

"Our parents, the boomers, dodged the draft, snorted cocaine and made self-indulgence a virtue. I call them the Ungreatest Generation. Here's their chance, finally, to give something back," she writes to her fellow twentysomethings.

Daily Kos: Flying spaghetti monster defeats anti-evolution FL school board

by davidkc

Wed Dec 26, 2007 at 04:20:46 AM PST

Efforts were afoot recently on the Polk County School Board (in the Tampa, FL area) to begin teaching the "concept" of intelligent design in science classes as an alternative to evolution, at a time when new state standards mentioning evolution by name for the first time are under consideration. It appeared that this bonehead move had the support of a majority of the school board, but that was before the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster arrived and shamed the school board into backing down. Jump down to read more about this somewhat merry holiday tale.

Paul Krugman: Progressives, To Arms!

Forget about Bush—and the middle ground.

By Paul Krugman
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2007, at 7:53 AM ET

Here's a thought for progressives: Bush isn't the problem. And the next president should not try to be the anti-Bush.

No, I haven't lost my mind. I'm not saying that we should look kindly on the Worst President Ever; we'll all breathe a sigh of relief when he leaves office 405 days, 2 hours, and 46 minutes from now. (Yes, a friend gave me one of those Bush countdown clocks.) Nor am I suggesting that we should forgive and forget; I very much hope that the next president will open the records and let the full story of the Bush era's outrages be told.

Liberal Fascism: A preview

-- by Dave

As I've mentioned, I'm still awaiting my copy of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, though the good folks at Sadly, No! have been kind enough to provide us with excerpts that are, em, enlightening, so to speak.

So far, it's clear that my early surmise of its contents are proving accurate. Take, for example, the book description from its Amazon page, presumably written by either Goldberg or his editor:

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.

Oh, really? They were ardent socialists?

Gosh, I guess that would explain why the first prisoners rounded up and sent to Dachau -- the first Nazi death camp -- were socialists and communists:

Dachau is one of the first concentration camps the Nazis establish. The first prisoners arrive two days later. They are mainly Communists and Socialists and other political opponents of the Nazi party. Dachau is the only camp to remain in operation from 1933 until 1945.

Santa's Sweatshop

-- by Sara

Fifty million American parents want to know: WTF?

All they wanted to do was buy their kids something fun for Christmas morning. All they asked of their government was to do some basic oversight so their kids wouldn't be, y'no, poisoned by their toys.

And, as we've come to expect from the feckless bastards that Rick Perlstein calls "E. Coli conservatives," all they got in return was a jolly ho ho ho...

Paul Krugman: State of the Unions

Once upon a time, back when America had a strong middle class, it also had a strong union movement.

These two facts were connected. Unions negotiated good wages and benefits for their workers, gains that often ended up being matched even by nonunion employers. They also provided an important counterbalance to the political influence of corporations and the economic elite.

Cheney accused of blocking Californian bid to cut car fumes

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday December 24, 2007

Guardian

The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, was behind a controversial decision to block California's attempt to impose tough emission limits on car manufacturers, according to insiders at the government Environmental Protection Agency.

Staff at the agency, which announced last week that California's proposed limits were redundant, said the agency's chief went against their expert advice after car executives met Cheney, and a Chrysler executive delivered a letter to the EPA saying why the state should not be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases.

CIA chief to drag White House into torture cover-up storm

THE CIA chief who ordered the destruction of secret videotapes recording the harsh interrogation of two top Al-Qaeda suspects has indicated he may seek immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying before the House intelligence committee.

Jose Rodriguez, former head of the CIA’s clandestine service, is determined not to become the fall guy in the controversy over the CIA’s use of torture, according to intelligence sources.

Dollar's Fall Is Felt Around The Globe

Weakening U.S. Currency Harms Overseas Markets

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 24, 2007; A01

The sharp decline of the U.S. dollar since 2000 is affecting a broad swath of the world's population, with its drop on global markets being blamed at least in part for misfortunes as diverse as labor strikes in the Middle East, lost jobs in Europe and the end of an era of globe-trotting rich Americans.

It marks a shift for Americans in the global economy. In times of strength, a mightier dollar allowed Americans to feed their insatiable appetite for foreign goods at cheap prices while providing Yankees abroad with virtually unrivaled economic clout. But now, as the United States struggles to fend off a recession, observers say the less lofty dollar is having both a tangible and intangible diminishing effect.

Daily Kos: Book Review: Charlie Savage's "Takeover"

by SusanG

Sun Dec 23, 2007 at 09:50:52 AM PST

Takeover
The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy
By Charlie Savage
Little, Brown and Company
New York, 2007

[Cheney] hoped to enlarge the zone of secrecy around the executive branch, to reduce the power of Congress to restrict presidential action, to undermine limits imposed by international treaties, to nominate judges who favored a stronger presidency, and to impose greater White House control over the permanent workings of government. And Cheney’s vision of expanded executive power was not limited to his and Bush’s own tenure in office. Rather, Cheney wanted to permanently alter the constitutional balance of American government, establishing powers that future presidents would be able to wield as well.

"Angry Black Man" Does GOTV

By Paul Kiel - December 20, 2007, 1:43PM

As Josh wrote earlier this week, I've been gobbling up the new tell-all by Allen Raymond, the former GOP consultant of New Hampshire phone jamming fame.

You might wonder why Raymond, a life-time Republican operator, decided to write the book (which is due out in early January). The short answer, as he writes: "when the shit hit the fan, my political party and my former colleagues not only threw me under the bus but then blamed me for getting run over."

New Handshake, Same Grip

By David Nather, CQ Staff

For the past seven years, George W. Bush has expanded presidential power in ways that no one could have predicted when he took office.

He and Vice President Dick Cheney have worn their independence — from oversight by either lawmakers or judges — as a badge of honor, necessary to keep the nation safe from another terrorist attack and restore what they have regarded as a weakened presidency. But the cost has been a poisonous friction with Congress and a growing public perception that they simply weren’t interested in checks and balances.

Frank Rich: A Résumé Can’t Buy You Love

WE can only imagine what is going on inside John McCain’s head when he contemplates Mike Huckabee. It can’t be pretty. No presidential candidate in either party has more experience in matters of war than the Arizona senator, and yet in a wartime election he is being outpaced by a guy who has zero experience and is proud of it.

“I may not be the expert that some people are on foreign policy,” Mr. Huckabee joked to Don Imus, “but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.” So much for the gravitas points earned during a five-and-a-half year stay at the Hanoi Hilton.