Writ­ing about a Chi­nese pro­test­er at the wel­com­ing recep­tion for the Chi­nese Pres­i­dent, Lar­ry John­son writes George Bush, You’re No Rea­gan:

Where are we today? A pro­test­er is forcibly removed from the White House grounds. The White House, a sym­bol of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, became a back­drop for the new author­i­tar­i­an­ism of the Bush era. Rather than show the Chi­nese leader the beau­ty of tol­er­at­ing dis­sent, Bush presided over the arrest of a woman who dared speak out against her coun­try’s leader. Bush fur­thered the insult to Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy by apol­o­giz­ing to Chi­na’s leader for the outburst.

It’s been a while since I wrote about the NSA spy­ing. I’m still out­raged, and I still want heads to roll. I just don’t see who will step for­ward to be the axe­man. The pres­i­dent usurped the pow­er of Con­gress and the Courts, set him­self above the law, and no one with any pow­er seems pre­pared to even both­er find­ing out what that means to reg­u­lar cit­i­zens, let alone restor­ing the bal­ance of pow­ers that have made this nation strong.

As we gaze toward the bas­tion of sta­bil­i­ty lying between Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s worth return­ing to that theme. The Pres­i­dent and his sup­port­ers, includ­ing Sen­a­tor Roberts, have claimed that Con­gress does­n’t have to autho­rize a nuclear strike against Iran­ian nuke sites.

Why would­n’t he want to get involved? Roberts whines:

“we have not made the progress on our over­sight of Iran intel­li­gence, which is crit­i­cal.” The pan­el has done only piece­meal scruti­ny of the spy agen­cies’ work on Iran. “There is no orga­nized commit­tee staff effort to look at Iran right now,” says major­i­ty staff direc­tor Bill Duhnke. “It’s all sort of on hold.” 

He blames the Democ­rats for want­i­ng to know what went wrong with the intel­li­gence process last time before we dive head­long into the next disaster.

Crazy talk, right?

I want my coun­try back.