Off to Rome-on-Potomac

To see the sordid Emperor of the day, and the republican greatness of the past. 7 days later, muchachos.

Continuing Charlie Wilson's War

I finally got around to viewing Charlie Wilson's War the other evening. Good flick, especially the ending where a power vacuum is created in Afghanistan after the U.S. brought hell to the Russians, and after both sides just left it to the religious fanatics.

Lincoln Memorial Note on the Passing Scene

Politics aside, the Lincoln Memorial makes for a powerful backdrop no matter what the occasion. It's size is only realized when someone is actually standing beside it, or way in front of it. I had a chance to visit the swamp-turned-capital last in 1997.

What, Me Worry on This Fine Ship of Fools?

Molotov cocktails

So what is the correct Pepean reaction:

(1) Don't worry, be happy.
(2) Ah, so what -- it's just a bunch of stoopid Ricains.
(3) DC ain't Versailles, so who cares.
(4) Swell -- it's chickens coming home to roost.
(5) Naahh -- it's just a Bush-Halliburton-Cheney-neocon-KKK-redneck conspiracy.
(6) IT'S ALL BUSH'S FAULT!!!!
(7) All the above

Demigods Contra Demigods, All While the Plebs Look On

Congressional hearings are interesting this way. It's akin to one cleric calling the other a hypocrite.

Pro athletes like Clemens are deities in their own world and rarely challenged. When they are, it tends to happen gently and with their consent, as in a one-on-one television interview, or else privately, as in a disciplinary hearing before a league commissioner, with phalanxes of lawyers and union reps there to defend them. Never are they as nakedly vulnerable as when testifying before Congress—yet none ever seems to grasp this, which is what makes these hearings so bizarre and riveting.

How disorienting it must have been for Clemens, then, to face the hilariously red-faced Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), who has the bristling haircut of a 10-year-old boy, carrying on about whether the star witness had “carried Band-Aids for his butt if he bled” through his “designer pants” after receiving a shot of something powerful in his hind quarters. The whole Tom Davis litany was delivered as Tom Davis, seven-term congressman, sat beneath a gilded, gold-framed oil painting of...Tom Davis.


Still, it'd be a good idea for athletes to stop juicing and becoming complete freaks of nature. In the meantime, I'll won't be tuning the television to any pro sports. Well, perhaps ultimate fighting. But that's it.

PC Conservatism

A jaundiced look at the Big Tent.

How 'bout that

Mitt is on a roll!

District of Columbia Speak

I have great respect for the senior senator.
I am about to drill my elderly colleague a new one.

I had some gals come over to the condo to give me a massage.
I paid for sex.

I hope we can work together in a bipartisan way.
I need to pick off one senator from the other party to pass this bill.

I don’t know how to get you to get it through your heads that it’s not new.
I am disappointed that you noticed that I switched positions.

This should not be a political issue.
My party has a winning political issue.

It’s time to stop playing politics.
The other party has a winning political issue.

As I said in my Wall Street Journal op-ed last week...
I am so important that I can quote myself.

Thank you for the very frank and candid discussion.
You just spit in my eye.

War is my last choice.
The bombing begins in three weeks.

I will continue to do the people’s business.
I expect to be indicted.