After being AWOL for days, President Bush’s speech writers and handlers are finally responding to the tsunami disaster and firing up the teleprompter. Bush could have gotten out there and said the same things a week ago, but I guess he had to balance the demands of one of the greatest natural disasters ever versus his overgrown brush.
Anyway, it was pretty funny to see him standing with President Clinton today, after the official excuse makers took a shot at Clinton last week when explaining why Bush had disappeared. It looked like Clinton appreciated the irony of the moment as he stood there.

Ahh. Now this is the America we all love:

Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.
The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts. The outcome of the review, which also involves the State Department, would also affect those expected to be captured in the course of future counterterrorism operations.
. . .
As part of a solution, the Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, plans to ask Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence, according to defense officials.

Indefinitely imprisoning “terrorists” without charges–how is this different than the Soviet Union? What’s next on the docket? Gulags in Georgia?

The obligatory January 1 post.

Oh brother.

I’m sure several people are busily working on President Bush’s Inaugural Address. I think they should borrow this from Andrew Jackson’s Second Inaugural Address (emphasis added):

Finally, it is my most fervent prayer to that Almighty Being before whom I now stand, and who has kept us in His hands from the infancy of our Republic to the present day, that He will so overrule all my intentions and actions and inspire the hearts of my fellow-citizens that we may be preserved from dangers of all kinds and continue forever a united and happy people.

Yes. In language closer to Bushspeak, “My fellow Americans, pray that I don’t screw the world up too badly while I’m here.”