Acerbic Politics

A Bush nation is a police state. Now, even when the cops make a mistake, they are not wrong and you have no rights.

From the LA Times.

Mistakes sometimes happen when police conduct home searches, the Supreme Court said Monday in throwing out a lawsuit brought by a white couple in Southern California who were rousted from bed and held naked at gunpoint by deputies looking for several black suspects.

The search of Max Rettele and his girlfriend, Judy Sadler, in their bedroom may have been an error, and it was certainly embarrassing to them, the justices said. But it did not violate their rights under the 4th Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures," they added.

Police obtain search warrants based on probable evidence, not "absolute certainty," the court said in an unsigned opinion. "Valid warrants will issue to search the innocent, and people like Rettele and Sadler unfortunately bear the cost."

See, Dick Cheney isn't stupid - he's just an idiot.

From TBO.com

The United States is in a tight spot in Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney, upon his recent return from visiting troops there, conceded, "I can't predict precisely what will happen."

He and President Bush are choosing their words more carefully, lowering expectations.

Today's thinking is beginning to echo 1991 when Cheney was secretary of defense. He explained then why an invasion would be risky: "Once we cross over the line and start intervening in a civil war inside Iraq, it's a whole different proposition. There is no question that if we wanted to commit U.S. forces, we could go in and clean up the Iraqi Army or take Baghdad or intervene and defend the Kurds or the Shiites against the onslaught of the Iraqi Army … It would without doubt cost a lot of American lives, and it raises the very real specter of getting us involved in a quagmire trying to figure out who the hell is going to govern Iraq."

They love big business - until they're the one's who get burned.

From Bloomberg.com

``Are you kidding me?'' says Senator Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican, when asked why he's so critical of insurance companies.

Lott, 65, launches into a critique of the industry, peppering it with words such as ``arrogant'' and ``mean- spirited,'' statistics about company profits and executive pay and angry questions about why its lobbyists are fighting a clutch of bills he is pushing -- including one that would strip companies such as State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. and Allstate Corp. of their 62-year-old exemption from federal antitrust laws.

The Senate's No. 2 Republican has become the industry's No. 1 critic in Congress ever since he lost a house to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. While Lott recently settled with his insurer, State Farm, after a year-long court battle, he is continuing the fight in the Senate. His experience, the senator says, has convinced him that an industry he defended his entire career is in need of reform.

It ain't perfect, but the Democrats pass some reforms to the Congressional Ethics Rules.

From ABC News.

"This is good legislation," agreed Craig Holman of Public Citizen, a nonprofit watchdog group. "But more needs to be done."

On overwhelming and bipartisan votes, the House passed a pair of bills to bolster disclosure requirements on campaign contributions by lobbyists.

Other major features include requiring members to notify the House ethics committee when they are negotiating for a job in the private sector, and recuse themselves from consideration of legislation related to those potential employers.