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Cartoonist Don Asmussen reminds us that, even on the Fourth of July, we must always be on the lookout for people who aren’t patriotic enough.

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.

Cartoonist D.C. Simpson looks at McCain’s job qualifications. (Click to see the whole cartoon.)

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

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is an originalist so far as the Constitution is concerned. He doesn’t believe in a “living Constitution” that is reinterpreted as the world changes; he’s dedicated to the original meaning of the words of the Constitution, insofar as he can discern it, and applying that meaning in all circumstances.

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.

There’s no doubt about it, the Republicans are going to be playing hardball this year, as cartoonist Don Asmussen has discovered:

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

Thirty-six years ago today, police arrested five men who had broken into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington, DC. The burglars were working, secretly, for Richard Nixon’s re-election committee. They were discovered by a low-paid security guard named Frank Wills, just doing his job. Their arrest started the slow unraveling of the criminal enterprise known to history as the Nixon Administration.

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.

So many reasons to vote Republican:

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

Via Eschaton: The McCain campaign is selling golf gear as a fund-raiser. The product page originally invited customers to leave a review, and some people weren’t taking it seriously.

Punk kids ruin everything for everybody!

Via Atrios: is the Iraq War an Iranian plot?

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…

I was struck by this line from John McCain’s Tuesday speech:

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.

John McCain, last night before Clinton or Obama spoke:

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.)

It may seem silly, but one of John McCain’s challenges in the campaign ahead is to prevent Republican true believers at rallies — and particularly at the Convention — from breaking into that old GOP chant, “Four more years! Four more years!”

McCain’s in trouble if voters think he’s running for Bush’s third term, but Republicans love that chant. The Republican loyalists know that even though John McCain isn’t George W. Bush, any Republican administration is going to give thousands of powerful government jobs to the same legion of party stalwarts who enabled Bush and Cheney. They’ll carry on the revolution, even if McCain flip-flops from his primary election positions, and starts claiming he’s unenthusiastic about parts of Bush and Cheney’s legacy.

Somewhere, some devious Democrats are plotting dirty tricks right now — send a dozen or so provocateurs to some McCain rallies, and when says he won’t withdraw from Iraq, start chanting “Four more years! Four more years!” The Republican faithful in the crowd will feel compelled to join the chant, of course, and Obama will have another TV ad where he can stick that picture of McCain hugging Bush.

Oh, Democrats are sneaky.

In St. Paul, Minnesota:

Or read a transcript.

(Updated to use a better video source.)

I saw some angry Hillary Clinton supporters on TV, declaring that they’ll vote for John McCain in November if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee.

Yeah, let McCain name the next two or three Supreme Court justices, replacing aging moderates. That’ll certainly advance women’s rights.

George W. Bush discussing a global warming bill on Monday:

I urge the Congress to be very careful about running up enormous costs for future generations of Americans.

Really — does this guy ever listen to himself?

Dit dit dit, dah dah dah, dit dit dit…

It took ESPN five days to fire this guy:

Mark Madden, who made his reputation with bold, outlandish attacks on famous people, has been permanently removed from the air by ESPN.

His dismissal, which came down from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., came five days after he made a scurrilous remark about U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on his 1250 ESPN talk show, which ran from 3 to 7 p.m. weekdays.

…

At the opening of his show last Wednesday, Madden said this about Sen. Kennedy, who days earlier had been diagnosed with brain cancer:

“I’m very disappointed to hear that Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is near death because of a brain tumor. I always hoped Senator Kennedy would live long enough to be assassinated.

“I wonder if he got a card from the Kopechnes.”

At the urging of station general manager Mike Thompson, Madden apologized over the air for his remarks about two hours later.

After initially reviewing the situation on a local level, Madden was neither reprimanded nor suspended. When asked if there would be some form of punishment, Thompson said, “No. The fact is we took action right away. Frankly, it was a comment that was stupid. He admitted that. I don’t think it requires any such thing as [discipline].”

ESPN had a change of heart, and it came from the corporate level in Bristol.

You know, I don’t think Madden’s going to have any trouble getting another job. On radio and some cable TV channels, outrageous hate speech is a career move these days. Who knows — CNN Headline News, perhaps?