Things You Don't Know Much About

Last week the Supreme Court gave Dick Cheney and the White House a victory; another tough one to swallow.

Turns out it’s okay to conduct secret policy meetings, which means we really don’t have open government at all.

So now, to quote the Italian kids back in the old neighborhood, “we don’t even know what we don’t know!”

Nor do we know what we do.

Paul Krugman of the “New York Times” wrote an article for Monday morning’s paper entitled “Staying What Course?”

It covers a lot of area and its main point is that the administration, paragon of national security it claims to be, has really made America a less safe place.

But what the scribe wants to talk about is the not-very-famous “Downing Street memo” that came out at the tale end of the recent election campaign in Great Britain.

Krugman, as we are doing here, noted that, “There has been notably little U.S. coverage of the memo (get it at www.downingstreetmemo.com)

The memo, essentially the minutes of a cabinet meeting, confirms what those of us who opposed the war and scoffed at all the references to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler, believed: that the administration never had a good reason to go to war other than the fact that it wanted to.

Here’s a section excised by Krugman for our delectation:. “Military action was not seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

So what good is a free media and access to backroom policy meetings if nobody’s going to call the administration on it?

And another thing we don’t know too much about. Did anybody read that the Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) called Bush “a loser” when visiting a school in his home state.

Reid said something about George the First being a “lovely human being”, but “as far as I can tell, the son’s a loser.”

It ran about a week ago, just a blip. Reid apologized and the White House took a bit out of the Democrats’ ass with the usual pap about obstruction and lack of ideas (to match their bad ones) and that was all she (or anybody else) wrote.

Where’s is the thunder on the right? Don’t they want to talk about the emperor’s new clothes?

The Humane Society of the United States would like you to know about something else you don’t know about.

Someone stuck a stealth amendment into a massive budget bill last year that allows wild horses on federal land to be sold commercially again. You have to wonder whose brainchild that was, given the service it renders the republic for which they stand.

Anyway, some level-headed people named Rahall and Whitfield have a new amendment that, to quote the e-mail sent by a highwayscribery source: “would ensure that tax dollars are never used for sales of wild horses that could lead to their slaughter.”

Apparently 41 wild mustangs have already come to an untimely end in recent weeks.

They want you to call your representative at (202) 224-3121, practice a little direct democracy, and direct them to vote “yes” on the measure.

We must govern ourselves with kindness.

And from Hollywood:

A killer episode of UPN’s Kevin Hill on tap for Wednesday night.

We’ve written about the show once before here at highwayscribery (“Honky Cat”, March 10).

To recap, Hill’s the extremely cool black lawyer living the cool New York City life when his cousin dies and leaves him a baby.

There’s your set-up. A few episodes ago the child’s (Sarah) mom turned up and Kevin opened his heart to her, and agot her out of jail to boot. She signed Sarah over.

Last week she returned a new woman with Christ both in her life and on her arm in the form of a preacher husband. The chapter closed with a great Red State/Blue State culture clash, on the blue state home floor of Kev’s Kool loft.

The good man of the cloth announced he was going to file for custody of Sarah. And then he cited Kevin Hill’s ken for a little cocktail now and again, “homosexuality” (the Nanny, George), and “licentiousness”(!) just because some scorned vixen showed up and got naked in front of Kevin!

The pastor said “Brother Kevin-“ and Kevin told him “don’t call me brother” before rolling the holy man and crew from his crib with a thundering “get out!”

Those liberal Hollywood script-scribe types have set up a courtroom drama to resolve the matter and you know, if the series is to continue, Kevin’s got to win Sarah back, unless of course they kill the filibuster today and some of Bush’s judges are seated.