Reacting to the latest in a series of unflattering comparisons by Democrats – this one by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton comparing Pres. Bush to Mad’s Alfred E. Neumann – a group of Republicans in Congress is introducing legislation to ban both similes and metaphors in any speech, public or private, by any Democrat.

“We’ve had it with these apt comparisons,” Sen. Bill Frist (R-Sanctimony) said. “No more. If a law won’t get it done, we’ll start a petition for a Constitutional amendment.”

Rep. Tom Delay (R-Hypocrisy) added the method of likening one person or thing with another is distracting from the public’s business.

“We’re running out of ways to appear righteously indignant,” he said. “They’re just wearing us down. That whole thing with the Gitmo gulags – it was tough parsing out the fine distinctions of why that was an outrage. We’ve got to have some relief.”

Asked why the law, which will include analogies and symbolism, as well as figures of speech, would only bar Democrats from making contrasts, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Freakazoid) said such a question was the equivalent of a personal attack.

“That’s like asking why we want religious freedom, but only for Christians,” he said. “It’s like asking why it’s O.K. for Americans to torture prisoners but not for insurgents to. It’s like asking why Bill O’Reilly can have phone sex but not Bill Clinton. It’s like saying gay people are screwing dogs. Wait, that was me. But what are you, like a Communist?”

On “Larry King Live” Monday night, intrepid reporter Bob Woodward (on the air to tout his Me ‘N’ Deepthroat book, “The Secret Man”) offered to serve some of Judy Miller’s four months of jail time for the principle of the thing. He urged others who believe in a free press to serve her time, as well.

Why? Because Miller is gallantly fighting for all reporters’ rights. Yeah, right, Bob, and Robert Novak has just been named the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Journalistic Ethics at the Poynter Institute.

Here is the transcript from the portion of the show:

WOODWARD: No. Clearly, we’re not above the law. But frequently, people disobey the law. And when you do so, you have to be willing to accept the consequences. And in this case, the consequences, I guess, are a four-month jail sentence, and Judy Miller’s willing to do that, to stand on this principle of trust. You know, I…

KING: You said you would have done it, too?

WOODWARD: I would have done it, too. And in fact, you know, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I will …

KING: Go ahead.

WOODWARD: … because it came to mind: If the judge would permit it, I would go serve some of her jail time, because I think the principle is that important, and it should be underscored. It’s not a casual idea that we have confidential sources. It is absolutely vital. And I’ll bet there are all kinds of reporters out there, if we could divvy up this four-month jail sentence — I suspect the judge would not permit that, but if he would, I’ll be first in line. It’s that important to our business.

And this book and Watergate demonstrated, the daily reporting in any newspaper or on CNN illustrates that. And what are you going to do? Are you going to interview all of the public relations people, all of the spokespeople, and that’s it? No one else can talk? Imagine, you know, the varnished pablum that would come out.

KING: We do need our Woodwards.

I agree, Larry. We do need our Woodwards — in jail!

Like Miller, who’s serving time to protect Karl Rove, Woodward (whose previous book on the Bush mis-administration was hailed for the “inprecedented access” Bobby was given to interview top Bush officials for “Bush at War”) is too dumb to see he’s been “Roved,” too. “Varnished pablum” indeed!

Entrepreneur, impresario and unsuccessful casino owner Donald Trump has offered to go to Capitol Hill to personally tell Karl Rove “You’re fired!”

“If that’s what it will take to get Rove out of the White House, I’m more than glad, as a true patriot and CEO, to do the job,” Trump told the Associated Press. “I’ll even do it on camera.”

Republican Senate leaders are seriously considering the curiously coiffed exec’s offer as a way to end the ongoing embarrassment over Rove’s “outing” of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Sen. John McCain expressed frustration over Rove’s continued employment, as it appears no one else at the cabinet level or above has shown any interest in firing him.

“It’s time for someone to go up the Potomac River and terminate Rove’s employment with extreme prejudice,” McCain said in arcane Viet Nam-speak.

Democratic leaders applauded Trump’s offer.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont spoke for the Democratic leadership: “If it took the evisceration of our cherished First Amendment right to free speech, the trampling of the long-standing practice of protection of journalists’ confidential sources, the journalistic integrity of Time Inc. and a four-month jail sentence for Judy Miller to get rid of Rove, it was well worth it.”

In other news, White House physicians expressed alarm at the idea of Rove being separated from President Bush, saying the president would then likely be declared legally brain dead and forced onto life-support with a feeding tube.

A grassroots alliance in small town Florida isn’t just pontificating about a possible draft, they are doing something concrete about it.

St. Augustine Record:

Three local women returned to the St. Johns County School board Tuesday with a request that “Opt Out” of military service forms be made readily available to St. Johns County students and their families.

Anne Galloway and Laura Braly, both members of People for Peace and Justice, and Peg Maguire, a member of Grandmothers for Peace, asked the school board to provide parents and of-age students with a form that gives them the freedom to opt out of the service.

Few people know the Bush government sneaked a clause into law the forces schools to contribute to a national database on teens, for use when they become old enough for the draft we don’t have. Yet.

Braly pointed out that Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires schools to forward a student’s data to the military, but she also said that the law gives parents the option to prevent their children’s information from being sent to military recruiters.

“Parents need to be made equally aware of their option to deny this process,” Braly said.

This is just one little group of women taking a stab at a great big thing, but who knows, maybe it could grow into a movement. Hmmm, a movement. Reminds me of Arlo Guthrie.

“I went over to the sargent, said, “Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I’ve rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I’m sittin’ here on the bench, I mean I’m sittin’ here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough join the army – burn women, kids, houses and villages – after bein’ a litterbug.”

He looked at me and said, “Kid, we don’t like your kind, and we’re gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington.”

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I’m singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you’re in a situation like that there’s only one thing you can do and that’s walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in say “Shrink, you can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant.” And walk out.

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them. And three people do it, three – can you imagine – three people walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out?

They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine 50 people a day, I said 50 people a day walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out? Friends, they may think it’s a movement…”

The White House may not be talking but Karl Rove’s attorney gave an interview today to Byron York at the National Review Online. Luskin says Time Magazine reporter “burned” his client after he revealed to Cooper the identity of a secret CIA agent.

So how did Cooper burn Karl Rove? Rove feels betrayed by Cooper because the reporter had the temerity to write the story differently from the way Rove told it to him. In other words, Rove expected Cooper to be his stenographer, and because Cooper did his job and tracked down the true facts, Rove felt “burned.”

Luskin compared the contents of a July 11, 2003, internal Time e-mail written by Cooper with the wording of a story Cooper co-wrote a few days later. “By any definition, he burned Karl Rove,” Luskin said of Cooper. “If you read what Karl said to him and read how Cooper characterizes it in the article, he really spins it in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to them to report negative information about Plame.”

First the e-mail. According to a report in Newsweek, Cooper’s e-mail to Time Washington bureau chief Michael Duffy said, “Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation…” Cooper said that Rove had warned him away from getting “too far out on Wilson,” and then passed on Rove’s statement that neither Vice President Dick Cheney nor CIA Director George Tenet had picked Wilson for the trip; “it was, KR said, wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip.” Finally — all of this is according to the Newsweek report — Cooper’s e-mail said that “not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly that there’s still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger…”

So having heard this, Cooper was supposed to simply write up what Karl said, send it to his editor and call it a day. That’s probably what Judy Miller would have done.

[…]

It has been a long strange trip for Donna Frye, the Democrat who could become San Diego’s next mayor in a special election on July 26.

She is a former surf shop owner who became a political activist when her husband, surfing legend Skip Frye, and his friends mysteriously started becoming ill. They quickly began to suspect that the illnesses were caused by pollution dumped into the ocean by businesses onshore.

When she ran for city council, political experts wrote her off as a “surfer chick” – but she won.

Last year, she ran for mayor as a write-in candidate, launching her campaign less than five weeks before election day, and nearly beat Mayor Dick Murphy, a Republican. Now Murphy has resigned because of a scandal and Frye is running for his seat and, as the only Democrat in the race, appears to have the best shot at winning:

[…]

“There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. If there’s leaks out of my administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.”

— President George W. Bush, Sept. 30, 2003

“If anyone in this administration was involved in [leaking the CIA operative’s identity], they would no longer be in this administration… The president knows [Karl Rove] wasn’t involved… It’s simply not true.”

— President Bush’s spokesman Scott McClellan, Sept. 30, 2003

“The White House promised if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration. I trust they will follow through on this pledge. If these allegations are true, this rises above politics and is about our national security.”

— Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., July 11, 2005

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton gave a wide-ranging speech in Colorado on July 10, 2005, at the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Ideas Festival.

She said we should stay in Iraq until the Iraqis can run their own government, that America needs to get serious about weaning itself from dependence on oil by looking into alternative energy technologies, and that we are living in an age of discovery, citing the coming wave of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence,

None of that made headlines, however. Her speech made “news” because of this quote:

“I sometimes feel that Alfred E. Newman is in charge in Washington,” she joked, getting a warm laugh as she described President Bush’s attitude toward the tough issues of the day as, “What, me worry?”

What followed was a critique of the Bush presidency that was thoughtful, well-reasoned and, of course, true:

[…]

In a General Accounting Office report just released, the GAO found that the Department of Homeland Defense had not implemented a security program to protect its information systems and the sensitive information it gathers.

Indeed, from the litany of undones and incompletes the report lists, it would seem that one of the most important bulwarks in our country’s vaunted war on terrorism is subject to hacking from virtually any kid with an IBM and a grudge:

DHS has not fully implemented a comprehensive, departmentwide information security program to protect the information and information systems that support its operations and assets. It has developed and documented departmental policies and procedures that could provide a framework for implementing such a program; however, certain departmental components have not yet fully implemented key information security practices and controls. For example, risk assessments—needed to determine what controls are necessary and what level of resources should be expended on them—were incomplete. Elements required for information system security plans—which would provide a full understanding of existing and planned information security requirements—were missing. Testing and evaluation of security controls—which are needed to determine the effectiveness of information security policies and procedures—were incomplete or not performed. Elements required for remedial action plans— which would identify the resources needed to correct or mitigate known information security weaknesses—were missing, as were elements required for continuity of operations plans to restore critical systems in case of unexpected events.

Let’s see, that includes the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Technology, or US-VISIT, which is supposed to identify and stop terrorists at our borders; Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE; the Transportation Security Administration — you know, the guys with the wands at the airport; and Emergency Preparedness and Response.

Sounds like the department should be renamed Homeland INSECURITY.
[…]

The White House press – especially the three network guys – went after Scott McClellan today over statements he made two years ago that essentially exonerated Karl Rove from involvement in the Plame leak.

It’s not exactly news to these way overpaid folks that Rove leaks like a sieve. Maybe this explains why it took nine days after the rest of us learned about this story for the boys and girls standing at the last bastion of democracy to ask McClellan about it.

Here’s a link to the video. You have to see this! It’s almost like the days when the DC Kool Kids went after Bill Clinton’s press secretaries – only now it’s Scotty who’s on the griddle! Watch him squirm and cry and act like he’s going to upchuck:

Crooks and Liars has the video.

Transcript below.

[…]