At a difficult time like today, can we really trust this country to anyone who doesn’t jump through meaningless symbolic hoops to prove his patriotism? And can we trust those who do jump through meaningless symbolic hoops? I mean — maybe it’s all part of some grand master plan to make us believe that they’re patriotic even when their actions hurt the country.

On the July 2 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade labeled New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Reddicliffe “attack dogs,” claiming that Steinberg’s June 28 article on the “ominous trend” in Fox News’ ratings was a “hit piece.” During the segment, however, Fox News featured photos of Steinberg and Reddicliffe that appeared to have been digitally altered — the journalists’ teeth had been yellowed, their facial features exaggerated, and portions of Reddicliffe’s hair moved further back on his head. Fox News gave no indication that the photos had been altered.

Click the link and watch the video there to see this in context.

The only thing you can be sure of with Fox News is that there is no no-spin zone there.

I also like this cartoon about the brilliance of Karl Rove. And this one, on a long eight years.

This week he decided that the first part of the Second Amendment — “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State” — was just padding, and didn’t mean anything. Yeah, the authors of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were always rambling on like that.

With the help of cartoonist Ruben Bolling, Judge Scalia takes us back to look at some other padding in the Constitution — something about habeas corpus. Click the comic to see the whole cartoon.

If there’s one thing Republicans know, it’s arrogance and elitism.

Do you suppose it’s possible that someday the criminal enterprise known as the Bush-Cheney Administration will slip up and start a similar unraveling? It seems unlikely, though it’s not clear whether that’s because the Bush-Cheney team is so spectacularly good at covering their tracks, or because the current Congress is too timid to follow where those tracks would lead.

It would be a scandal if the nation forgot the lessons of Watergate. The scandal would be called Forget-gate.

This may not have been officially approved by the Republican Party.

You might not want to click the links on that page; they lead to news stories from this world, which is pretty depressing.

Punk kids ruin everything for everybody!

I was two or three years old, I suppose, when I noticed a fly, fairly high on my bedroom wall, that never moved. (Flies were interesting, because they seemed able to blink out of existence — flying away faster than my eyes could follow.) For days or weeks, the fly on my bedroom wall didn’t vanish, and didn’t move. Eventually I pulled up a chair or something and climbed up to get a closer look. It was a nail. My conclusion: by standing very still for a long time, a fly could turn into a nail.

As I said, I was very young. I now believe that the wind moves the trees, and not vice versa. I now believe that the nail on my bedroom wall was never a fly — that I had been mistaken when I thought it was. I now believe that a fly is a fly and a nail is a nail.

I could never be a modern politician. I’m a flip-flopper.

Those who feel that their points can only be expressed as personal attacks can get their own blog, where they can comment on this blog in any way they see fit.

Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that a small group of Pentagon officials who’d collected dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran from Iranian exiles might have “been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service … to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government,” a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.

A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the group’s activities after only a month, and Pentagon officials never followed up on investigators’ recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.

The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.

Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces.

I’m guessing that, if Bush gets his wish for a war with Iran, we’ll find out he is carrying out the will of an even worse enemy. Could it be that the Soviet Union never really went away? ‘Cause, you know, the Russians have those nesting dolls…

(Most of this eulogy quotes from a 1966 speech by Robert Kennedy to South African students.)

America has seen tough times before. We’ve always known how to get through them.

Yeah, I’m thinking of the Great Depression. World War II. Tough times. We got through them by electing a Democrat.

Thanks for reminding us, Sen. McCain.

Hillary Clinton spoke next:

The Obama video was posted earlier.

The Democrats seem to have an enthusiasm advantage, if nothing else.

(Update: Boiled down and pre-digested by pundits.)