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Crooks and Liars has posted a video clip that shows me I should be watching David Letterman. Interviewing Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, Letterman said (my transcript, from the clip):

Letterman: I’m not smart enough to debate you point to point on this, but I have the feeling about sixty percent of what you say is crap. But I don’t know that for a fact.

Bandleader Paul Shaffer: Sixty?

Letterman: You say sixty percent, Paul?

Shaffer: Sixty percent?

Letterman: Sixty percent. That’s just a — I’m just spitballing here.

Think Progress says the Bush Administration has neglected coal mining safety:

Phil Smith, the communications director for the United Mine Workers of America, said that while citations have been issued, the fines assessed for safety violations are too small to force large corporations to make improvements. “The problem with the current laws is enforcement.” According to an AFL-CIO analysis, the Bush administration cut 170 positions from federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and has not proposed a single new mine-safety standard or rule during its tenure.

And there’s a reason for that. The Washington Post reported that West Virginia coal firms raised $275,000 for Bush.

I wonder whether the Administration will be donating that money to charity now, like some other politically embarrassing contributions.

I’m grateful that twelve of the thirteen miners trapped by a coal mine explosion have been found alive. Prospects had looked very bleak.

(It is not yet known just when George W. Bush will stage his photo op with the rescued miners to try to cash in on their rescue.)

Update: Apparently the early reports were wrong. At this point, only one of the thirteen miners is alive. He is hospitalized in critical condition. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the miners lost in this disaster.

Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty, but he starved his anti-poverty programs to fund the war in Vietnam.

Today, the Bush Administration and Republicans in Congress are fighting an undeclared war on the poor. They’re winning.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes about the latest battle in that war:

If Congress were merely useless, the country would be better off. But it’s worse than useless. In the iron grip of a Republican Party that is almost slavishly devoted to the Bush administration, it’s downright destructive, especially to the interests of poor and working people.

Consider the budget that will soon be sent to the president for his signature. Members of the House and Senate have agreed on legislation that achieves something approaching $40 billion in savings over five years primarily by hammering the sick, the poor, the elderly and college students and their families.

This is the same Congress that genuflects each time the president asks for yet another gift-wrapped tax cut for the wealthiest among us. The textbooks tell us that the U.S. is a representative democracy, but only the upper strata are truly represented.

…

“The Congressional Budget Office,” wrote Kevin Freking of The Associated Press, “has concluded that [increases in Medicare premiums and co-payments] would lead many poor people to forgo health care or not to enroll in Medicaid at all – contributing to some of the $4.8 billion in Medicaid savings envisioned over the next five years.”

(I listened the other day to a story about a woman who had repeatedly postponed a visit to the doctor because she was broke and had no health insurance. It turned out she had breast cancer. By the time it was diagnosed, the cancer had already spread through much of her body. The prognosis for this woman is not good, and it should not be the policy of the United States government to encourage this kind of situation.)

…

This is ugly stuff: mean-spirited legislators hacking like wild men with machetes at the already ragged safety net. Poor children, the very sick and the disabled are among those most likely to tumble into the abyss.

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Because of some minor, last-minute changes that have to be dealt with, the House will have one more crack at this bill before it goes to the president. It would be an opportunity for some Republican “moderates,” who should be appalled at what is happening, to step up and be heard.

Don’t hold your breath.

On the Memorial Day weekend of 1974, I took a 12-hour ride on a Greyhound bus to Washington, D.C. It was the first time I’d traveled outside Ohio. I stayed at a cheap hotel and did as many touristy things as I could cram into a long holiday weekend.

I brought back fake parchment facsimiles of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence, and I hung them on the wall in my apartment. When a visitor asked where I’d got them, I said I’d taken the White House tour, and someone had thrust the papers at me from behind a door and whispered tensely, “Psst! Buddy! Get rid of these for me!”

Richard Nixon was president then, and everybody got the joke, even if they didn’t laugh. It’s been more than thirty years since I’ve told that joke, but I think it’s time to trot it out again.

From Daily Kos:

Fawn Hall, Oliver North’s secretary during the Iran Contra Scandal, said in her testimony during the Congressional investigation of Iran Contra:

[T]here were “times when you have to go above the written law.”

And defenders of President Bush’s disregard of FISA have adopted this Fawn Hall defense. Of course, Vice President Dick Cheney does not put it exactly that way. Instead he argues that the President is above the law…

…

Cheney suggested that Democrats who push to reduce the powers of the presidency in the wake of the disclosure of the eavesdropping program would pay a political price. “Either we’re serious about fighting the war on terror or we’re not,” he said. “Either we believe that there are individuals out there doing everything they can to try to launch more attacks, try to get ever deadlier weapons to use against us or we don’t. The president and I believe very deeply that there is a hell of a threat.”

Well, Mr. Vice President, either we are serious about following the Constitution and the law or we are not. Either we believe the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and no person is above the law, or we don’t. I believe the Bush Administration is a hell of a threat to the rule of law and the Constitution. And I don’t care if there is a political price for saying so.

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Privately, administration officials have said for months that they see the anti-terrorism fight as a decades-long struggle similar to the Cold War that dominated the second half of the 20th century.

So the question the Media needs to ask is ‘is the Constitution now indefinitely suspended?’ And when did we decide to do that?

From The Once and Future King:

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn — pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics — why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.”