The "I" Word

People are making rather a lot of Sen. Chuck Hagel's statement yesterday in an Esquire magazine interview. I think it means more than nothing, but less than it might seem.

I thought Hagel's statement on impeachment was extraordinary, even though he put the thought in the third person and hypothetical future tense. "you might see calls for his impeachment" isn't a call to arms so much as a warning. He later refers to Congress' dereliction of duty as though he weren't a part of it:

"Congress abdicated its oversight responsibility," he says. "The press abdicated its responsibility, and the American people abdicated their responsibilities. Terror was on the minds of everyone, and nobody questioned anything, quite frankly."

See a "boy, did I screw up" in that? Any sign of a "yes, I made some noises that I didn't like the Military Commisions Act and some seriously unconstitutional parts of the Patriot Act that indicated I knew how dangerous they were, but voted for them anyway"? I don't see it, either. Part of any move for impeachment on the Republican side will have to include a mae culpa on the part of its leaders. We're not there yet.

So far, I mostly see posturing by Hagel to try to claim the role of the "maverick" Republican, even though mavericks are usually people who actually do something to set themselves apart from the crowd. We clearly live in a world of diminished expectations. And let's not forget Hagel's origins: he's the guy who owned the voting machine company that made the machines that counted the votes in his election, and apparently did it badly.

In 1996, Hagel became the first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years when he did surprisingly well in an election where the votes were verified by the company he served as chairman and maintained a financial investment. In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, Hagel’s ES&S counted an estimated 80% of his winning votes. Due to the contracting out of services, confidentiality agreements between the State of Nebraska and the company kept this matter out of the public eye. Hagel’s first election victory was described as a “stunning upset” by one Nebraska newspaper.

Diebold, Electronic Voting and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

Let's just say that when I think of Chuck Hagel, Zorro isn't the cartoon character that comes to mind.

Still, this interview is important because it's a Republican mentioning the possible impeachment of his party's President and leader. It will get easier now, even though I still don't think Congress have the will to do it.

NOTE: Much of this text was part of a comment I made at Taylor Marsh's site.

The Wait Is Over

Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty on four of five counts. The only "not guilty" verdict was on the Micheal Cooper/lying to the FBI count, which most folks who follow this thing thought was the weakest case. Inevitably, there will be appeals, but considering how carefully Judge Walton handled this case, it doesn't seem likely there will be much to appeal. Of course, Firedoglake has the play-by-play (just keep clicking the next article) and some commentary. Taylor Marsh has a news flash as well, but you already know the basics. If you don't, check out this summary by Time. As Taylor wrote:

But know this, the juror[s] found Scooter Libby did lie. I'm beyond thrilled for Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson. And let's get something clear, this may be about lying to reporters, but this is really about LYING ABOUT HOW WE GOT INTO IRAQ.

Today, a little justice happened in America. Sadly, the instituation that's been responsible for that justice is under seige. Eight U.S. Attorneys, including the one who convicted Rep. Randall H. "Duke" Cunningham of bribery, were summarily fired last December after the Republican Congress passed the new "Patriot" Act. This Act, yet another piece of heinous legislation from those tools, had a provision allowing the Attorney General to fire U.S. Attorneys at will. Alberto Gonzalez, slimey little hack that he is, took the opportunity to get rid of some of the better ones. I wouldn't be shocked if Patrick Fitzgerald, the Libby trial prosecutor, were on that list someday, but thanks to this win he may be untouchable for now. Lynn Allen of Evergreen Politics has more on John McKay, the Seattle U.S. Attorney who was among those dismissed. The House is holding hearings on this today, and McKay is supposed to be one of the witnesses.

UPDATE: Christy Hardin Smith has a live blog of Patrick Fitzgerald's post-trial news conference. Perhaps the most important part is this:

Is your investigation over now? Fitzgerald says that he does not expect to file any further charges. If information comes to light or if new information comes forward that warrants further investigation, we will do that. The case is now inactive. We are going back to our day jobs.

In all likelihood, Plamegate is over.

UPDATE 2: Larry Johnson, a former CIA employee and a classmate of Valerie Plame Wilson's at Quantico, may have had the last, best word on Scooter:

Guilty! Four out of five. Now what? Let's see. Will Scooter Libby be a hot date on Sadie Hawkins day once he's in the pen? He took such delight in screwing political foes, perceived and real, that he is about to discover an ancient Indian truth--Karma can be a bitch.

Next Steps in Plamegate

I can't quite bring myself to wish him any more ill than he's likely to encounter already, but if anyone in his position ever deserved a big load of karma to be dumped on him, it's Lewis Libby.

A Yogi In Time

Image credit: NIST

Philosopher and sometime baseball player Yogi Berra is alleged to have once described time as "what keeps everything from happening all at once". As with many of his utterances, this one is as elegant a description as anything people with PhDs could come up with. One thing that definitely isn't occuring at the same time is the end of the Libby trial and the verdict. We're now at seven days and counting. The jury are back at their deliberations, and may be let out early today if Judge Walton agrees.

Today's clock is a "chip scale" atomic clock introduced by the NIST back in 2004. "Chip scale" means it's about the size of a typical integrated circuit. Someday, you may have one in your house and you'll never have to set the thing again (as long as you remember to change the batteries, of course):

The heart of a minuscule atomic clock—believed to be 100 times smaller than any other atomic clock—has been demonstrated by scientists at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), opening the door to atomically precise timekeeping in portable, battery-powered devices for secure wireless communications, more precise navigation and other applications.

Described in the Aug. 30, 2004, issue of Applied Physics Letters, the clock’s inner workings are about the size of a grain of rice (1.5 millimeters on a side and 4 millimeters high), consume less than 75 thousandths of a watt (enabling the clock to be operated on batteries) and are stable to one part in 10 billion, equivalent to gaining or losing just one second every 300 years.

In addition, this “physics package” could be fabricated and assembled on semiconductor wafers using existing techniques for making micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), offering the potential for low-cost mass production of an atomic clock about the size of a computer chip and permitting easy integration with other electronics. Eventually, the physics package will be integrated with an external oscillator and control circuitry into a finished clock about 1 cubic centimeter in size.

NIST Unveils Chip-Scale Atomic Clock

Some of your tax dollars really are spent well. How does it work? Well, like this:

The new clock is based on the same general idea as other atomic clocks such as the NIST-F1 fountain clock—measuring time by the natural vibrations of cesium atoms, at 9.2 billion “ticks” per second—but uses a different design. In the chip-scale clock, cesium vapor is confined in a sealed cell and probed with light from an equally small infrared laser, which generates two electromagnetic fields. The difference in frequency of these two fields is tuned until it equals the difference between two energy levels of the atoms. The atoms then enter a “dark state” in which they stop absorbing and emitting light; this point defines the natural resonance frequency of cesium. An external oscillator, such as quartz crystal like those found in wristwatches, then can be stabilized against this standard.

The important point is that the resonant frequency is a well-known physical constant, and once it's reached that frequency, it will tend to stay there.

The NIST Small Clock program is continuing to refine this design, and maybe we'll start seeing products based on this technology in a few years.

There sure are plenty of examples of how our tax dollars are being spent badly these days. One of the more blatant has been the recent unjustified firing(subscription or watching an ad required) of eight U.S. Attorneys. In at least one case, a U.S. Attorney was replaced by a political croney of President Bush's. shoephone has a great summary of the story and the latest inklings that Congress may finally get involved.

Meanwhile, Brent Budowsky opines that things aren't going so well at Walter Reed these days. SusanUnPC notes that soldiers there are being told to shut up, and the general in charge has been fired. Interestingly, no one in the Congress or the Administration have yet been fired for funding the place at a far lower rate than needed, nor have they been fired for ignoring many of the underlying problems for years. Senator Jack Reed made this observation, according to Reuters:

Sen. Jack Reed, who served as a captain in the U.S. Army, said after a closed-door meeting of senators with Gates that Weightman's removal was not enough on its own.

"I think they have to go further in terms of establishing responsibility," said Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat. "It's not just about firing individuals, its about fixing the problem."

U.S. Army hospital chief removed from post

I'll just add that telling the people who are suffering under this system to shut up isn't enough, either. In contrast to the civilian world, in the military comanders are held responsible for just about anything that happens in their commands. If it's shown they didn't try to correct the problems, they are usually treated as Gen. Weightman was. That's fine, we could probably use a little more of that on the civilian side of government. But Sen. Reed is right, what's really important is fixing the problems, and it sure looks like SecDef Robert Gates is mainly interested in punishing those "responsible" for this problem - the ones who are stuck with it, in other words. Things will only get harder as more wounded and disabled soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan.

UPDATE: (10:15AM PST, Mar. 2) No news either at Firedoglake or Google about the trial, so it looks like we're still waiting. No discussion of wasted tax dollars could be complete without mentioning what the Bush Administration are doing to our national security. Scarecrow at FDL provides a good roundup. According to the AP, we've reached 3,163 dead American servicemembers in Iraq.

Just A Little Longer ...

Image credit: U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

Sometimes waiting can make time seem to stretch into geological scale. When you're waiting for the one bit of justice you're likely to see for some of the worst people to run our government in a very long time, you have to keep reminding yourself that these things take time. Like parents do on a cross-country road trip, we keep saying "Just a little longer ...".

Speaking of geological ages, today's "clock" is a way of measuring geological time:

In 1962, scientists of the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office prepared a report summarizing available information on the magnetic stripes mapped for the volcanic rocks making up the ocean floor. After digesting the data in this report, along with other information, two young British geologists, Frederick Vine and Drummond Matthews, and also Lawrence Morley of the Canadian Geological Survey, suspected that the magnetic pattern was no accident. In 1963, they hypothesized that the magnetic striping was produced by repeated reversals of the Earth's magnetic field, not as earlier thought, by changes in intensity of the magnetic field or by other causes. Field reversals had already been demonstrated for magnetic rocks on the continents, and a logical next step was to see if these continental magnetic reversals might be correlated in geologic time with the oceanic magnetic striping. About the same time as these exciting discoveries were being made on the ocean floor, new techniques for determining the geologic ages of rocks ("dating") were also developing rapidly.

Magnetic stripes and isotopic clocks

Even the direction of magnetic north changes over time, sometimes dramatically. That's some comfort considering what we're going through these days.

While the eons pass before our eyes, check in at FDL. Christy Hardin Smith has an examination of what the Libby trial tells us about the press. Oh, and according to emptywheel, the jury needed more sticky notes. She also looks at the essay I pointed out the other day by Jim Marcinowski.

Oh, and ever the class guy, John McCain announced he's running for President on a talk show. As always with McCain, the press went out of its way in the linked article to paint him as a maverick:

McCain has also irked the GOP's social conservative base by refusing to back a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage saying the issue is a matter for the states.

Well, at least we have that. Go read the article. It's worse than I let on.

And Still, We Wait

Image credit: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Today's clock is a Chinese water tower. Apparently, these were all the rage in the 11th Century:

One of the most elaborate clock towers was built by Su Sung and his associates in 1088 CE. Su Sung's mechanism incorporated a water-driven escapement invented about 725 CE. The Su Sung clock tower, over 30 feet tall, possessed a bronze power-driven armillary sphere for observations, an automatically rotating celestial globe, and five front panels with doors that permitted the viewing of changing manikins which rang bells or gongs, and held tablets indicating the hour or other special times of the day.


NIST: Early Clocks

And I thought GPS was complicated ...

As of noon Eastern time (9:00 AM Pacific), there is still no verdict in the Libby case. emptywheel and Jane Hamsher are on Libby watch this morning at Firedoglake. Apparently, there's been a question from the jury, and the lawyers have been arguing about it all morning. According to Jane, it's something to do with the count having to do with the Cooper false statements charge, and it's settled now. Check in there for the latest news on the trial, and other diversions.

If you get tired of that, go read Eric Boehlert's article on The Washington Post's crush on right-wing bloggers. Because that "liberal media" meme just never gets old, know what I mean? Some jokes are like that. I really like the eye-poke one.

More Waiting

image credit: Heidi Viredaz-Bader

Believe it or not, that's a clock:

Another clock with a thermic motor is the PUJA made by Karl Jauch, Schwenningen, Black Forest. It is constituted by two pairs of tubes containing alcool. One of these tubes is heated from the bottom so that the alcool flows into the upper tube outside the gravity center and the system starts turning, winding up the spring of a traditional mechanical movement.

Antique Electric Clocks (By Michel Viredaz)

As emptywheel notes, we're still waiting for a verdict in the Libby case. Larry Johnson's battle to make the Washington Post a responsible newspaper on the Libby trial has been joined by Jim Marcinkowski today. It's not going to change them, I'm sure. They're owned too thoroughly by the right to ever be serious commentators, but pointing out their irresponsibility might eventually change their readers' minds.

Meanwhile, Christy has more bad news about what we're doing in and around Iran. Looks like Condoleeza Rice, the closest thing to an adult in the Bush Administration's foreign policy team, is on the outside now. This is based on a Time magazine announcement regarding Seymour Hersh's latest article about Iran, which is a must-read. The Times UK is reporting that our generals may start quitting if there's an attack on Iran:

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.

US generals ‘will quit’ if Bush orders Iran attack

Taylor gives us the bad news about Iraq, and notes that Americans are getting impatient. Apparently, the Democratic leadership in the Senate thinks it's OK to pass on the Iraq issue, so they can concentrate on things that aren't time critical right now. You read that right, and I wrote it correctly. Thanks to "Give Em The Appearance of Hell" Harry, it's starting to look like we're in for another year or two of Iraq before Congress gets serious about doing anything. Like I keep saying, if you don't like it, you know whose country it is, and to whom you should complain.


Want good news? Sorry, fresh out today.

UPDATE: Thanks to Juan Cole, here's some good news. The governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington have signed an agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Governors from five Western states agreed Monday to work together to reduce greenhouse gases, saying their region has suffered some of the worst of global warming with recent droughts and bad fire seasons.

The governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington state agreed that they would develop a regional target to lower greenhouse gases and create a program aimed at helping businesses reach the still-undecided goals.

"In the absence of meaningful federal action, it is up to the states to take action to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this country," said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat. "Western states are being particularly hard-hit by the effects of climate change."

[Five] Governors Agree to Work on Climate

Gannett adds:

The agreement by the Western governors is similar to an initiative by nine Northeastern states to reduce carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system.

[Five] governors agree to fight greenhouse gases

As you might expect, Wikipedia has an entry on the subject of emissions trading, which contrary to what the Bush Administration thinks is not a drinking game. The idea is that polluters can trade emissions credits so that the companies that emit less can sell to companies that emit more than the allowed amount. This creates a market incentive to prevent pollution, particularly since in some plans non-polluters may also buy up the credits and "retire" them, making the average pollution lower. Read the Wikipedia article if that doesn't make sense to you.

Except for Schwarzenegger, widely viewed as a moderate Republican, all the governors are Democrats.

UPDATE 2: According to Christy at FDL, the jury has gone home for the day. Looks like I'll have to find another clock image tomorrow.

Best Wishes, Steve

Steve Gilliard, who blogs at The NewsBlog, is apparently going to undergo a round of surgery. Please check his blog for the details, I don't want to inadvertently create a false impression about what's going on. Jen, his blogging partner, keeps us as up to date as she can.

Steve's has been a wise and passionate voice out here on the Internet, and we'll miss him while he's away.

Still Waiting ...

image credit: John Pritchett

The jury in the Libby trial is still deliberating. Looks like it's going to be a long one, so get out your sunblock.

Meanwhile, there are actually things going on in the world that aren't related to living or dead celebrity bimbos. No, I'm not going to provide links. If you want that kind of news, go to CNN or MSNBC. Isn't the twenty-four hour news cycle just wonderful? You can always be informed about all those important developments that affect your life, no matter what time of day you turn on the TV.

Juan Cole writes today in Salon that the British withdrawal from Iraq may not be quite the good thing the Administration is protraying it as. As Prof. Cole points out, Patrick Lang doesn't think so, either. Meanwhile, some Democratic Senators are supposedly drafting a bill that would limit our role in the conflict. If you've read some of my past writings you'll know I don't think it's enough, but it's at least a start, and it is trying to keep us out of the civil war.

Meanwhile, in that forgotten war, Afghan warlords have, it would seem, been busy trying to obtain pardons of their own. The BBC's Lyse Doucet writes about the situation there:

Afghans have, in some ways, made an impressive journey since a hastily assembled group of Afghans and foreign envoys forged what became known as the Bonn process.

With some difficulty and delay all the ambitious targets were met: a traditional assembly, or loya jirga, approved a new government in 2002; a second loya jirga came up with a constitution; and presidential and parliamentary elections were held for the first time in decades.

But for many Afghans it is a job half done.
...
Afghanistan is still a place awash with guns, where commanders and local officials can impose their will with impunity, where many Afghans say their lives have changed little.

Most startling of all, the Taleban have made a comeback in the south, fighting with unexpected ferocity and firepower.

Afghanistan: A job half done

The only good news I see this morning is that the North Koreans are talking about dismantling their nuke program. Like the Democrats in the Senate, the North Koreans are going to have to do more than talk to convince me, but it's a good sign given that they're willing to negotiate giving up their ability to reprocess plutonium in exchange for oil and food. Of course, that was such a bad deal in 1994, how could this "tough" Administration make the same deal now?

Tom Vilsack has dropped out of the Presidential race, citing lack of financial backing. Other than that he was the chairman of the DLC and that he was one of the first Presidential candidates to speak out forcefully on Iraq, I don't know much about him.

And I hear Britney's got a new doo?

UPDATE: It looks like the British will be increasing their forces in Afghanistan soon.

UPDATE 2: Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake reports that the Libby jury has been sent home for the weekend. Looks like justice will have to wait until next week, if not longer.

The Waiting ...

image credit: U.S. Naval Observatory

So, I told Google, "find me a cool clock image", and this is what it came up with. It's a Hewlett-Packard 5701A cesium clock, one of the best. The article I, ahem, borrowed it from has this to say:

USNO Cesium Clocks

Most of the Observatory's cesium clocks are model HP5071A, made by Agilent Technologies, Inc. of Santa Clara, California. With an improved cesium tube and new microprocessor- controlled servo loops, the 5071A vastly outperforms the earlier 5061 cesium frequency standards. The Naval Observatory 5071A's feature HP's optional high-performance cesium beam tube, with accuracy 1 part in 10E12, frequency stability 8 parts in 10 to the 14th, and a time domain stability of < 2 parts in 10 to the 14th with an averaging time of 5 days. Other companies that produce cesium clocks include Datum, Inc. of Beverly, MA and Frequency Electronics, Inc. of Uniondale, NY.

Cesium Atoms at Work

It's your tax dollars at work, and working pretty well, I might add.

Meanwhile, the defense and prosecution have made their closing arguments in the Libby case, and it's been given to the jury now. There's nothing to do now but wait for the verdict. Considering that it took more than a day for the two sides to make their closing arguments, I'm not expecting to hear anything soon. It's hard to wait when there's so much riding on a case, but that's how it has to be. There's a lot of information that the jurors need to discuss and absorb.

You could pass some time by reading T-Rex's response to the Gary Kamiya article I mentioned yesterday. You may notice some similarity in his remarks to something I wrote last week, but T-Rex is much, much funnier. You could also get caught up on who George W. Bush reminds himself of on this President's Day.

There are, of course, people who have things to do that don't involve waiting around for some former Admnistration scumbag to finally encounter the bad karma he's been building up all this time, and I'm going to do my best to imitate them today. Try to enjoy the day.

UPDATE: Dan Froomkin thinks that there might be some bad karma headed Dick Cheney's way, courtesy of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald:

Fitzgerald has long maintained that Libby's testimony to investigators -- that all he had done was pass along unsubstantiated gossip about Plame that he had heard from NBC Washington bureau chief Russert -- was a pure fabrication.

But yesterday, he called the jurors' attention to the fact that before telling that story to investigators in October 2003, Libby had only shared it with one person: Cheney, who also happened to be the person from whom Libby first learned about Plame, fully a month before the conversation with Russert.

"What's the one thing he tells one person in the fall of 2003?" Fitzgerald asked. "He goes and tells the person who told him" about Plame this story he had made up.

"Think about that," Fitzgerald said momentously, in an obvious attempt to get the jury -- and quite possibly, a wider audience -- to consider that Libby and Cheney may have been agreeing on a cover story at the time.

That, by the way, was precisely the possibility suggested by Murray Waas, in a particularly prescient piece for the National Journal on Sunday. Waas also quoted sources as saying that if Libby is found guilty, the prosecution may pursue Cheney -- presumably by trying one more time to "flip" Libby and turn him into a prosecution witness.

The Cloud Over Cheney

If that Waas article looks familiar, it might be because I pointed to it a couple of days ago in Scooter's Gonna Skate. I still think there's going to be a pardon for Libby, and Froomkin's reminding us why.

UPDATE 2: Reportedly, the Libby trial jury have adjourned for the evening.

UPDATE 3: The AP says so, so it must be true.

Washington And The Hessians

An absurd study in contrasts courtesy The New York Times

Colorado Bob inspired the start of this essay, and President George W. Bush inspired the latter part. Let's see how those two parts fit together, shall we? Colorado Bob wrote a comment to a previous article mentioning NPR's Robert Krulwich discussing the story of George Washington deciding to spare his army's Hessian prisoners after the British murdered captured American soldiers brutally. This reminded me of a comment I'd posted at Firedoglake right after the Military Commissions Act was passed. The MCA is also known as The Torture Act of 2006, President Bush's "get out of jail free" card, and the lowest point in Congressional history since Preston Brookes beat the snot out of Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate for denouncing slavery. That was in May, 1856, by the way. Senator Hillary Clinton made a speech against the MCA that recalled that decision of Washington's so long ago:

Here’s a part of Sen. Clinton’s speech on the Torture Act today:

During the Revolutionary War, between the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which set our founding ideals to paper, and the writing of our Constitution, which fortified those ideals under the rule of law, our values – our beliefs as Americans – were already being tested.

We were at war and victory was hardly assured, in fact the situation was closer to the opposite. New York City and Long Island had been captured. General George Washington and the continental army retreated across New Jersey to Pennsylvania, suffering tremendous casualties and a body blow to the cause of American Independence.

It was at this time, among these soldiers at this moment of defeat and despair, that Thomas Paine would write, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Soon afterward, Washington led his soldiers across the Delaware River and onto victory in the Battle of Trenton. There he captured nearly 1000 foreign mercenaries and he faced a crucial choice.

How would General Washington treat these men? The British had already committed atrocities against Americans, including torture. As David Hackett Fischer describes in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Washington’s Crossing,” thousands of American prisoners of war were “treated with extreme cruelty by British captors.” There are accounts of injured soldiers who surrendered being murdered instead of quartered. Countless Americans dying in prison hulks in New York harbor. Starvation and other acts of inhumanity perpetrated against Americans confined to churches in New York City.

The light of our ideals shone dimly in those early dark days, years from an end to the conflict, years before our improbable triumph and the birth of our democracy. General Washington wasn’t that far from where the Continental Congress had met and signed the Declaration of Independence. But it’s easy to imagine how far that must have seemed. General Washington announced a decision unique in human history, sending the following order for handling prisoners:“Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren.”

Therefore, George Washington, our commander-in-chief before he was our President, laid down the indelible marker of our nation’s values even as we were struggling as a nation – and his courageous act reminds us that America was born out of faith in certain basic principles. In fact, it is these principles that made and still make our country exceptional and allow us to serve as an example. We are not bound together as a nation by bloodlines. We are not bound by ancient history; our nation is a new nation. Above all, we are bound by our values.

George Washington understood that how you treat enemy combatants could reverberate around the world. We must convict and punish the guilty in a way that reinforces their guilt before the world and does not undermine our constitutional values.

Many of the Hessians Washington spared that day later settled in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and became American citizens. The British, despite their cruelty and despite being one of the world’s preeminent military powers, were not able to persuade enough of the rebels to give up in order to defeat the rest. Five years later, they were gone.

Both parties should be thoroughly ashamed of their collective actions today. Individuals may be able to take some comfort in doing the right thing, but as parties they’ve disgraced themselves.

Oh, and Rep. Sherrod “I’ll stand up to my party when I think they’re wrong” Brown can eat my shorts.

Comment by Cujo359 to Firedoglake article "Good Times"

As you may be able to tell from some of my writing, I'm no fan of Senator Clinton's. But she stood up and did the right thing that day by opposing and speaking against this heinous, cowardly act. The aptly surnamed Sherrod Brown, now a Senator, voted in favor, and pissed on his own supporters while doing it. Personally, I have no use for the man. He apparently can't remember the oath he took when he became a congressman.

Roughly one out of four Hessians stayed in America after the war, according to Krulwich's guest, Prof. Fisher, author of Washington's Crossing. Their descendants today probably number in the hundreds of thousands. The British empire prospered for a while longer, then finally collapsed, at least partly because Mahatma Ghandi made the British aware of the cruelty that had built it in the first place.

Washington's decision to spare the Hessians happened in the winter of 1777, the worst for the Continental Army. I'm not an expert on Washington by any means, but as a general, he didn't have a particularly good record. The only battles of any significance that I recall him winning were at Trenton and Yorktown. However, he did something much more important than winning. He kept his army together for five long, grass-eating, disease-ridden, and largely defeat-ridden years through winters with little in the way of shelter, and even though the army consisted entirely of volunteers signed up for only a few months at a time. Had they chosen to, I'm sure that many of his soldiers could have deserted with no danger of being caught - there wasn't even a true nation behind the army, just a group of local governments banded together loosely and at times not very comfortably. He kept that army together long enough to outlast the most powerful nation on earth at the time with only a small army and no real navy to speak of. That accomplishment, and the incident in question, speak volumes about Washington's courage, humanity, and wisdom.

On President's Day, 2007, George W. Bush decided to compare himself to George Washington. In keeping with its tradition of only putting the President in front of docile, hand-picked audiences, his handlers brought a busload of high school students from Georgetown. I cannot imagine a starker contrast between two men who have held the same job. Bush couldn't have lasted a week doing what Washington had to do. Washington held an army together with little more than his will. Bush, when confronted with his first real crisis, froze for several minutes, and could only rouse himself when his aides urged him to get back to his plane. He then invaded a country that wasn't even a threat to us, and destroyed it completely. He wouldn't even ask his rich buddies to pay more taxes to help the soldiers injured in that unnecessary war. When faced with a daunting task and the real threat of extinction for himself and his country, Washington chose to use humanity and honor as the way to victory. Bush whined about a problem that would barely have registered as a blip on Washington's trouble meter, claiming through his sycophants that it was an unprecedented threat of titanic proportions, and chose cruelty and mendacity as his chief weapons. Washington's defining character traits were courage, wisdom, and compassion. Bush's are fecklessness, laziness, and arrogance.

If Bush has even one tenth of the wisdom Washington had, he'll never bring up the subject again.

UPDATE: Michael J.W. Stickings has an interesting take on Bush's speech.

UPDATE: Gary Kamiya asks Is There Life After Bush? (subscription or watching an ad required). To which I reply "I certainly hope so".