Franken Sense

June 25, 2007
The Untouchable (Bob Franken)
@ 10:24 am

That is one creative legal argument Vice President Cheney advances, arguing he does not have to comply with the order requiring members of the executive branch, the Bush administration, to account for the way they handle classified material.

Why? Because the vice president of the United States, under the Constitution, is president of the Senate and casts tie-breaking votes.

Since the Constitution also specifies that only Congress can determine how it operates, Cheney is not bound by the executive order.

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June 22, 2007
Devil’s Island (Bob Franken)
@ 12:10 pm

I have been to Guantanamo Bay a lot since they brought the first prisoners, uh, “detainees.”After an outcry from reporters the military decided it was better to let us in rather than face questioning over what they were hiding.

So they came up with a tightly controlled tour of the facility. Journalists call it “The Dog and Pony Show.”

I mean TIGHTLY controlled. We had to sign restrictive agreements about what we could say and show. And we weren’t really allowed to see much anyway that departed from the propaganda that these detainees were being “treated in humane fashion”

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June 21, 2007
The Idle Mind (Part II) (Bob Franken)
@ 12:59 pm

More of today’s random thoughts (which really means I didn’t have anything I wanted to write about):

I wonder if those sickeningly sweet Romney family blogs can be read safely by diabetics. Or, for that matter, anyone with a gag reflex.

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June 21, 2007
The Idle Mind (Bob Franken)
@ 10:30 am

Some random thoughts:

The uproar over passport backlogs misses the point: Not only are our leaders trying to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to get into this country, now they want to make it tougher for CITIZENS to get in.

If the importance of party affiliation continues to decline, would a Richardson-Tancredo ticket be tough to beat?

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June 20, 2007
The Bloomberg Party (Bob Franken)
@ 11:40 am

Back in the Cold War, commentator Nicholas Von Hoffman observed that the differences between Republicans and Democrats were no greater than between “minor factions in the Communist Party.”

It was arguable then and it’s probably more so today. But now we have a new ruling-class wrinkle.

Michael Bloomberg has announced that the Democrat who became a Republican is now becoming a nothing. Oh, excuse me — an independent.

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