Teabagging!

From today's mass teabagging in Lafayette Park:

original image by Sommer Mathis, dcist, lol'd by me

McCain Calls Hillary a Pig

Via Glennzilla:

Disgraceful, huh?

Richard Cohen Remains an Idiot, or "The Stupid! It Burns!"

Good lord...how is it that this man continues to be employed as a columnist? He should be relegated to the fringes of the blogosphere currently inhabited by the likes of yours truly.

Here's a gem:

It's important to state right off that nothing in Obama's record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views or agrees with Wright when it comes to Farrakhan. Instead, as Obama's top campaign aide, David Axelrod, points out, Obama often has said that he and his minister sometimes disagree. Farrakhan, Axelrod told me, is one of those instances.

Note the bolded text, which I emphasize because, well, this is in the column's third paragraph. One hundred and forty words into a 787-word column. Which, well, doesn't really count as "right off," especially coming on the heels of two lead paragraphs that seek to connect Barack Obama to Louis Farrakhan, and then highlight some of Farrakhan's nastier past statements.

There follow seven more paragraphs on the evils of Farrakhan himself and those who say nice things about him. But that's okay, because in the last paragraph, Cohen writes:

I don't for a moment think that Obama shares Wright's views on Farrakhan. But the rap on Obama is that he is a fog of a man. We know little about him, and, for all my admiration of him, I wonder about his mettle. The New York Times recently reported on Obama's penchant while serving in the Illinois legislature for merely voting "present" when faced with some tough issues. Farrakhan, in a strictly political sense, may be a tough issue for him. This time, though, "present" will not do.

You know something, Richard? If you don't for a moment think something, you shouldn't waste your column insinuating it. And if you don't for a moment think something is true, then why in the name of All That Which Does Not Suck should it be a "tough issue" for Obama? Because the only reason it would be an issue is if idiots like you, who "don't for a moment" think Obama "shares Wright's views on Farrakhan," write columns in major newspapers claiming that this is a "tough issue" where "'present' will not do" for a response.

Of course, it's important to state right off that nothing in Cohen's column suggests he harbors anti-Obama views.

Yet and still, Richard Cohen is an idiot...

This time, BarbinMD at Kos beats me to the Fisking.

How does Cohen still have a job? Seriously...I mean, doesn't he at least have, you know, an editor? Or at least a fact checker. Someone to maybe point out that starting out a column about candidates lying with a lie is, um, ironic...really ironic, too, not just "ironic" in an Alanis kinda way.

Richard Cohen is an idiot

I'm not sure that this is even coherent enough to respond to...Richard Cohen has apparently decided that fear of perjuring yourself is an appropriate grounds for pleading the 5th Amendment. Wow.

Let's start here, shall we?

She knows that in Washington, free speech can cost you a fortune in legal fees.

Ummm, hate to break this to you, Richard, but she's paying those lawyers who told her to clam up plenty. You think Akin Gump drafts letters to Congressional Committees out of the goodness of their heart? Moving on:

More likely, Goodling's problem is probably not what she's done but what she might do. If she testifies before Congress, swears to tell the truth and all of that, she will produce a record -- a transcript -- that can be used against her. If a subsequent witness later on has a different memory of what transpired, then the bloodcurdling cry of "special prosecutor" will once again be heard in the land.

You know what? Cry me a freaking river all you want, but "fear of what she might do" simply is not an actual reason for pleading the 5th. "Oh, sorry, I can't testify because I might lie." What Irving Lewis Libby was convicted of was telling a bullshit story, telling it more than once, and persisting in it even though no one else was telling a similar story. He was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair trial. Believe it or not, they actually took the "different memor[ies]" of "subsequent witnesses" into consideration, and decided that Irving was full of it. These were NOT minor inconsistencies that Irving was peddling under oath - the were bald-faced lies, and he was convicted of telling them. To repeat the lesson: fear of "what she might do" is not a valid reason not to testify. Moving on:

No lawyer is going to be thrilled about letting a client testify in today's political environment. Remember, please, that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was not convicted of the crime that the special prosecutor was appointed to find -- who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame -- but of lying to a grand jury. In fact, the compulsively compulsive Patrick Fitzgerald not only knew early on who the leaker was but also that no law had been violated. No matter.

Richard? Bubby? Lying to a grand jury IS a crime. All by its lonesome little self. And you know what? Federal investigators don't like being lied to. It pisses them off, and proving that someone lied to you is relatively easy to prove, especially if the lie is particularly blatant. You can't lie to a Federal investigator and expect them to just ignore it. News flash for you, pal: Martha Stewart faced zero liability for insider trading in imclone stock - she wasn't an insider...but then she went and lied to investigators...and maybe after her little visit to prison, she now realizes that lying wasn't such a good idea. I'm not even going to go into the whole Clinton impeachment thing...

The fact remains that ordinary politics -- leaking, sniping, lying, cheating, exaggerating and other forms of PG entertainment -- have been so thoroughly criminalized that only a fool would appear before Congress without attempting to bargain for immunity by first invoking the Fifth Amendment. After all, it is a permissible exaggeration to say that in recent years more senior federal officials have had sit-downs with prosecutors than have members of the Gambino family.

I'm gonna type this slow, so you can understand it, Richard: leaking, sniping, lying, cheating and exaggerating are not "PG entertainment" when the person you're lying to or cheating happens to have you under oath. Go ahead and leak lies to the press all you want - woo-hoo! Hours of harmless fun! Watch as we leak and lie the nation into a foolish, unnecessary war! No matter, it's all PG entertainment! - but lie to investigators, including Congress, at your own risk. And what sit-downs with prosecutors are you referring to? Because there's been precious little in the way of investigations and oversight these past six years or so. Remember, Dick, that the Valerie Plame investigation was triggered by the CIA itself (who clearly believed that Ms. Plame was covert enough that exposing her identity was an actual crime), not by some gung-ho committee chairman on the Hill.

Sadly, that's all the time I have for now...maybe I'll update this later...or maybe Dick Cohen will give me a whole new set of material...