PMC Commentary

The First Amendment is taking a lot of abuse these days from expanding government power sanctioned by those “small-government” conservative jurists appointed by small-government presidents and confirmed by recycling hordes of small-government senators.

It is questionable just how much of this small and freedom-loving government, as defined by these boys, we can stand.

Tuesday another landmark decision was handed down, pumping more steroids into Leviathan.

“The Supreme Court declared today, in a ruling affecting millions of government employees, that the Constitution does not always protect their free-speech rights for what they say on the job.

“In a 5-to-4 decision, the court held that public employees’ free-speech rights are protected when they speak out as citizens on matters of public concern, but not when they speak out in the course of their official duties.”

Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- the “conservative” crowd -- constituted the majority. Dissenting were big-government Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens and David Souter, the latter of whom wrote:

“Private and public interests in addressing official wrongdoing and threats to public health and safety can outweigh the government’s stake in the efficient implementation of policy, and when they do public employees who speak on these matters in the course of their duties should be eligible to claim First Amendment protection.”

Stevens, in a separate dissenting opinion, added that “‘The notion that there is a categorical difference between speaking as a citizen and speaking in the course of one’s employment is quite wrong.’ He said the majority ruling could have the ‘perverse’ effect of giving public employees an incentive to speak out publicly, as citizens, before talking frankly to their superiors.”

What Stevens didn’t add was that the Jeffersonian government so idealized by conservatives is busy cracking down on the right of any public employee in any capacity to tell the public what it so dearly needs to know.

Yet the same government that is stripping conscientious workers of their civic rights is, of course, forceful in asserting its own First Amendment guarantees. Journalist Helen Thomas, in her Watchdogs of Democracy (to be released June 20; thanks to Simon & Schuster for providing me an advance copy), notes the sad irony, for example, of Dick Cheney’s recent federal court victories over those who sued him over his energy task-force shenanigans, using the sound reasoning that “the government had a legal duty to produce documents regarding White House contact with business leaders and lobbyists.”

Concluded Thomas with equally sound reasoning: “In other words, Cheney argued, and the courts agreed, that the confidentiality of internal deliberations between the president and his advisors is constitutionally protected…. If a shield law is appropriate for the government, it is certainly appropriate for the press and the public” [my emphasis].

Amen -- but first, Lord, please deliver us from the further guardianship of small-government, freedom-loving conservatives.

Why Gore should run, in his own words

Yet another report of Al Gore’s comfortable withdrawal from the world of political madness -- or is it comfortable coyness? -- has surfaced.

“Mr. Gore was on the telephone [with the NYT’s Adam Nagourney] … to dismiss -- with a combination of weariness and wariness, but with something approaching finality -- speculation that his rising profile should be interpreted as the first stirrings of another bid for the White House.”

“‘Why should I run for office?’ Mr. Gore asked.”

Surely, Al, you jest. Why should you run?

Could it be that millions in your party are longing for some realistic alternative to the inevitably catastrophic frontrunner? Or that you could do more good as president than as filmmaker? Or that perhaps you should serve the term you already won?

Or that you’re the most forceful, honest and ethical voice speaking today in opposition to reactionary neo-Republicanism? Or that when the office calls, any personal preference to stay at home should take a back seat?

And shouldn’t you take your own advice, that which you so discerningly dispensed to Mr. Nagourney? To wit …

You “brimmed with disdain at the state of American politics and political journalism, urging [your] interviewer to quit a career of covering politics to turn to matters of real consequence….

“Politics, [you] said, has become a game of meaningless, mindless battles, conducted by unscrupulous methods and people, designed to transform even the most serious policy debates into sport.”

Al, isn’t one politician’s principled concentration on “matters of real consequence” the only way to counteract “unscrupulous” politicians self-embroiled in “meaningless, mindless” manipulations that cater to the lowest common electoral denominator?

“Political scribes,” you lectured to the NYT interviewer, “have to take off their cynical lenses through which they view every moral challenge as political spin.”

Again, aren’t your own words, Mr. Gore, reason enough to run? Forget the pure horserace mentality of political scribes for now. First, the gauntlet of “moral challenge” has to be thrown down. Without that focus, that repeated emphasis on what matters, the scribbling P.T. Barnums of the press corps will have nothing left to cover but the circus.

If you want change, Mr. Gore, you must get in the game.

You said it yourself.

Hermann Göring, Civil Libertarian

I wrote the following piece for an online journal in late 2001. Unfortunately, except for getting worse, some things don't change. I thought it worthy of republication.

On the 84th day of the Nuremberg trials, Hermann Göring took the stand in a defiant face-off with Supreme Court Justice and U.S. Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson. Since Göring's arrest by enemy forces in May, 1945 he had taken the cure for his lethargy-inducing addiction to dihydro-codeine and now appeared, according to coconspirator Albert Speer, to be "in better form than ... ever." Clean and sober, he displayed a "formidable personality" before the assembled panel of judicial overseers. As would soon be clear, Göring had come to a decision in advance of his testimony: he would use his recovered faculties not to lay bare the ugliness of political debauchery, but "to hoodwink his own people." Again, in Speer's appraisal, "his whole policy was one of deception."

In response to Justice Jackson's first question regarding the National Socialist Party's early dismissive attitude toward parliamentary due process and oversight, Göring dropped the legally immaterial comment that "I should like to emphasize the fact that we ... had the majority." (In actuality, "they" had a plurality, not a majority.) This recollection was in no way immaterial to the Reichsmarschall's way of thinking, however, for it was that might-makes-right political state of affairs 13 years prior that had justified his party's calculation that in the course of formulating steadfast national policy, parliamentary deliberations could offer only restraining divisiveness and thus were deemed "no longer necessary."

Jackson followed Göring's remedial lecture in Totalitarianism 101 with the observation: so "you established the leadership principle, which you have described as a system under which authority existed only at the top, and is passed downwards." At this point Göring protested the need "to avoid any misunderstanding." Before his party's appropriation of power--those days in which parliamentary procedures had reigned supreme--"responsibility [had] rested" with elected officials "who carry[ied] out the anonymous wishes of the majorities." Yet that political construct, "which we called parliamentary or democratic," was a disorderly scheme unable to fully protect Germany's security. Foreign and domestic threats abounded, and "only an organization made up of a strong, clearly defined leadership ... could restore order" and safeguard the fatherland's loyal citizens.

Göring hastily added, "But, let it be understood, [this was done] not against the will of the people, but only when the people, having in the course of time, and by means of a series of elections ... had expressed their wish to entrust their destiny to the National Socialist leadership." Justice Jackson pursued this creative neo-democratic train of thought. "The principles of the authoritarian government which you set up required ... that there be tolerated no opposition by political parties which might defeat or obstruct" your determined policies? Jackson had scored an A+. "You have understood this quite correctly," Göring affirmed. "By that time we had lived long enough with opposition and we had had enough of it.... It was now time to have done with it and to start building up."

In what would become a popular parlor game years later, he supplemented his defense of dictatorial acts by invoking words of FDR, who, Göring struggled to recall, had once approvingly mused that "certain peoples in Europe ha[d] forsaken democracy, not because they did not wish for democracy as such, but because [it] had brought forth men who were too weak." Hence, suppression of dissident voices promised the best hope against democracy's intrinsic messiness, irresolute will, and bothersome interferences into the efficient execution of sound policies. Nevertheless, Göring portrayed himself as a reasonable man, one imbued with the virtue of tolerance. "Insofar as opposition seriously hampered our work of building up, this opposition of individual persons was, of course, not tolerated. Insofar as it was simply a matter of harmless talk, it was considered to be of no consequence."

The associate justice thereupon noted that to accomplish the regime's state-security goals, "you found it necessary to have a secret political police to detect opposition." Why of course, said Göring. "That [was] necessary on a firmer and larger scale" than any undertaken by previous authorities. Accordingly--and quite sensibly--the next mandate was to arrange for the detention of suspicious individuals, but not merely so "it could be said, 'Here are a number of people who are opposed to us and they must be taken into protective custody.' Rather, they were set up as a lightning measure against the functionaries ... who were attacking us in the thousands."

Steeped as he was in principles of due process as a Supreme Court justice and former U.S. attorney general, Jackson confessed to Göring that "you are explaining ... to men who do not understand it very well." He strained to comprehend. "Was it also necessary, in operating this system, that you must not have persons entitled to public trials in independent courts? And you immediately issued an order that your political police would not be subject to court review or to court orders?" Here, Göring insisted on a fine point of "differentiation." Some "were naturally turned over.... The others, however, of whom one might expect such acts [of disloyalty], but who had not yet committed them, were taken into protective custody.... This could not be reviewed or stopped by any court."

Jackson trudged on, still lingering, one imagines, in a state of incredulity sired by his organic respect for fundamental human rights. "You did prohibit all court review and considered it necessary to prohibit court review of the causes for taking people into what you called protective custody?" Göring softened the prosecutor's assessment by tendering yet another statement of reasonable tolerance. Detained suspects "were to be informed after 24 hours of the reason for their being turned over, and that after 48 hours, or some short period of time, they should have the right to an attorney." Lest that be overly construed as a sign of faltering resolve, however, he swiftly appended: "This by no means rescinded my order that a review was not permitted by the courts.... These people were simply given an opportunity of making a protest."

Reich Cabinet Member Hermann Wilhelm Göring: prudent civil libertarian--and so misunderstood.

Pogo Politics

"Everything is pointing to a pretty big Democratic victory if attitudes toward Congress remain as negative as they are and attitudes toward President Bush remain as negative as they are. It's hard to imagine any way that wouldn't happen."

Thus spoke Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, presumably before regaining his senses and recalling that Democratic leaders once again have met the enemy, and it is, of course, themselves.

It’s not at all hard to imagine how they could take the looming certainty of “a pretty big Democratic victory” and snatch it from the jaws of that selfsame victory, since the party’s power players, whenever they can stand the sight of each other, convene on how best to splinter both strategy and resources.

It has been reported that “Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), who is leading the party's effort to regain majority status in the House, stormed out of [Howard] Dean's office [earlier this month] leaving a trail of expletives.”

And why did the DCCC chairman storm out of the DNC chairman’s office in less than wholesome form? Because the former’s strategy of short-term trench warfare in critical battlegrounds met head-on the latter’s strategy of long-term party-building as an affordable luxury, and the latter wouldn’t budge.

Many hardcore and especially left-leaning Democrats love Howard for his outspoken rambunctiousness. He possesses a directness that borders on innocence -- a rare commodity in this age of politicians saying nothing not tested in common-denominator-seeking focus groups.

That is to his credit. But Howard also has a knack for reading the situation wrong. His own presidential campaign quickly flowered into a textbook study in what not to do, particularly when it comes to spending money. He raised -- and blew -- a phenomenal amount of cash in record time, dreaming all along of general-election grand strategy rather than next week’s bloody battleground.

His opponents didn’t. They stayed in the day-to-day trenches.

We are now spectators at a trench warfare vs. broad strategy rematch, one of only slightly different form.

Newspaper reports speak of the “tension that has pitted Democratic congressional leaders, who are focused on their best opportunities for electoral gains this fall, against Dean and many state party chairmen, who believe that the party needs to be rebuilt from the ground up -- even in states that have traditionally been Republican strongholds….

"Howard Dean … has … sent money he has raised to state parties for party-building” -- and here’s the key -- rather than funneling that money into targeted Congressional districts.

That’s a mistake, big-time, as Veep Cheney would say. And for once he’d be right.

Naturally state chairmen want the cash for local purposes, but those targeted districts that could unseat the House’s majority are the only ones that count -- for now.

Predictably, RNC chairman Ken Mehlman is on target, saying “in an interview that most of [the money his party has raised] would go to help embattled Republican Congressional candidates, a show of financial force that could frustrate Democrats in their search to win control.”

In short, it won’t be a fair or pretty fight if Republicans pour a mound of cash into those places it counts, while Democrats spread their resources hither and yon in pursuit of an unattainable 50-state organization.

Howard, you’re wrong. Rahm is right.

The death of silliness?

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll is worthy of special notice not because it finds “Public confidence in GOP governance has plunged to the lowest levels of the Bush presidency.” That whirlpool has been spinning for months, with each poll recording successive new lows.

What is profoundly noteworthy, however, are two other items. First, the poll found that Americans are “saying by wide margins that they now trust Democrats more than Republicans to deal with Iraq, the economy, immigration” and seven other issues, meaning “Democrats are now favored to handle all 10 issues measured” by pollsters [my emphasis].

Second -- and this is the real political earthquake -- voters have now handed Democrats “a 14-point edge on handling … taxes.” Taxes, mind you, the one historical, veritable rock of GOP politics.

Take the issue of taxes away from a Republican pol and he hasn’t a demagogic leg left to stand on. This particular shift in public opinion eviscerates the very core of what Republicanism means, how it conducts itself, and how it sells itself.

The turnabout portends that the party’s latest accomplishment in institutionalizing earlier, deficit-exploding tax cuts was not only a wasted effort, electorally speaking, but indeed a step backward. Yet, even though the public no longer trusts it as a surefooted path, where else can The Grand Old Party of Tax Cuts Forever go but down the road of further tax cuts?

It may be that, at long last, the public recognizes that government cannot operate and provide even the most fundamental services required of a modern, civilized state without an adequate revenue base. That may read like an intelligence-insulting opening line from a Government 101 lecture, but it’s been nothing short of astounding that such a recognition by the body politic has been lacking for so long, even when allowing for its bamboozlement by the dedicated pied pipers of fiscal irresponsibility.

This past Monday the Post’s resident deficit hawk, Sebastian Mallaby, reiterated that “Nobody serious believes that tax cuts pay for themselves…. But most senior Republicans flunk this test of seriousness.” Mallaby goes on to quote several eminently unserious Repubs saying the darnedest things about fiscal policy, and I recommend the column for bittersweet laughs only.

He concludes with, “Having the world's best economics research isn't particularly helpful if those … politicians [who tout the country's economics expertise] are silly enough to tune it out.” They are, of course, as time after time has told. But, thankfully, this latest poll suggests that the public has finally started doing the tuning out -- the proper tuning out, that is.

Another week, another prodigious scandal followed by another muted chorus of short-lived outrage, and finally, another notch in the belt of Constitution killers.

The latest predictable outrage (please nudge me should I doze off while scribbling this) was the revelation that on top of violating eavesdropping laws the administration has, in further violation of the law, been trolling for a record of every domestic phone call. It is, of course, all quite illegal -- "If they don't get a court order, it's a crime," bluntly said the director of the Center for National Security Studies -- and would have guaranteed impeachment proceedings against any sexually promiscuous president without other sin.

A president sitting on a mountain of past high crimes and misdemeanors gets a constitutional pass, however, because -- or so it is argued -- tolerating criminality really does get easier when that criminality is framed in just the right circumstantial question.

The public nods approvingly when asked if it supports the government taking every possible precaution against another terrorist attack. Who wouldn’t? On the other hand, who would if the question included: “outside of constitutional boundaries and in direct violation of statutory law”?

The former is what was asked in the context of the latest criminal outrage, and not surprisingly, 63 percent responded, “You bet.”

Given that level of public imprimatur, the government can then defend the indefensible without even worrying about how silly the defense sounds. Consider this:

One senior government official, who was granted anonymity to speak publicly about the classified program, confirmed that the N.S.A. had access to records of most telephone calls in the United States. But the official said the call records were used for the limited purpose of tracing regular contacts of "known bad guys."

Here’s a presumably deduction-minded superspook saying that the NSA indeed knows who the bad guys are, and it’s well aware of the bad guys’ “regular contacts,” yet these two factors fail to stamp the data collection of your calls to Aunt Molly as anything but untouchable.

That defense wouldn’t pass the laugh test at a junior-high debate meet, yet there it is, the government’s laughable but seemingly acceptable story in the absence of widespread outrage demanding accountability.

But maybe outraged commentators are wrong in speculating that public outrage is understated largely, or only, because of faulty polling. Maybe outrage is missing mostly because the public doesn’t really care. Maybe the improper construction of polling questions is as irrelevant to the problem as the NSA’s illegal tactics are to tracking terrorists.

Civil liberties never have polled well and, when asked, most Americans don’t know the Bill of Rights from a bill of fare. Maybe for all their proud talk and forgotten civics lessons Americans simply don’t value liberty that much and will willingly trade freedom for police-state security on even the flimsiest of rationales.

Maybe this lambs-to-the-slaughter mentality of submission is just an atavistic, desperate Hobbesian reflex impossible to suppress in our short and brutish existences.

Try polling that.

Not so fast

Hillary had better watch out.

As reported by Chris Cillizza of the WP, Russ Feingold is talking tough -- much tougher than almost anyone else from what’s supposed to be, after all, the party of progressive opposition to this nation’s military-industrial, Big Brother plutocracy.

In a speech at the National Press Club [Monday], the Wisconsin senator focused heavily on the need for Democrats to buck the Bush administration on security issues -- ranging from the Patriot Act to the warrantless wiretapping program to the war in Iraq -- and sought to deliver a direct rebuttal of White House Deputy chief of staff Karl Rove’s assertion that Democrats have a "pre-September 11 world view."

"Many Democrats and others around this country want us to point out that the White House actually has a pre-1776 perspective and we ought to have the guts to point that out," Feingold said to laughter and applause.

"You don't hear this stand up language here in this town," he said. "The consultants and the pundits and others will tell you that those positions are quote 'losers'... and that it is dangerous to let there be any light between our position and the White House position, or else you'll get called soft on terrorism."

Feingold’s unnamed “others” undoubtedly include Senator Clinton, who long ago weighed thoughtful policy and real security against whatever electoral advantage might be had.

But Hillary was too clever too soon and for too long. She rode the Iraq war hysteria past its expiration date and will now have a tricky time retreating from what virtually all progressives three years ago saw as a long-term, politically foolish position.

Cillizza insightfully notes the upcoming problem for Hillary:

Feingold's message of change from without and his consistent opposition to the war in Iraq present an intriguing profile heading into 2008, especially in the Iowa caucuses where his anti-war stance and Midwestern roots should provide him a foothold.

All Russ needs is cash. Small item.

In the end Feingold may not be the one to give Clinton a run for all her money. I am convinced, however, that someone -- Al, are you listening? -- left of center will, and that the pundits are prematurely, and wrongly, vesting Hillary with owning this thing.

From Sunday’s NYT:

Under cold, drizzling skies at Boone Pickens Stadium, Mr. Bush made no mention of the war in Iraq, high gas prices or other problems confronting the nation. Instead he painted an optimistic picture of America and said that "the job market for college graduates is the best it's been in years," even in the face of weak job growth reported by the government on Friday.

This disengaged gobbledygook the president delivered last Saturday to 2,700 Oklahoma State University graduates is cause for (more) worry (than usual). It smells of a major initiative in the making, and Bushian creativity, as we all know, is rarely salutary to world order, domestic peace, small children or dogs.

Bush’s weekend speech indicated little more than a holding pattern as he waits for his indictment-dodging brain, Mr. Rove, to tell him what to do next. That normally wouldn’t be unduly worrisome -- no more than we’ve become accustomed to, that is -- but this final time around Rove’s strategic suggestion for humiliating the opposition and inspiring the base needs to be a truly inventive whopper.

All the usual politico-policy suspects -- principally that with Dems at the helm the Islamic bogeyman will get you -- have wizened from overwork. Nevertheless those are still what seem to be in the works, as the Times further reports:

Senate Republicans sent out a fund-raising letter this week seeking to use [the possibility of the opposition in Congressional control] to fire up the base, warning that a Democratic majority would put fighting terrorism "on the back burner" and that "our worst fears" could be realized….

On the other hand,

Mr. Rove has taken to traveling the country to form strategies with individual candidates and local parties while brainstorming with the president's political and policy teams on broad items the White House can pursue to help Republicans everywhere.

Broad items? The president has so broadly boxed himself in there’s precious little room in which to turn. Domestically he has virtually none, given that debt creationism is inviolable theology to Bush, climbing gas prices are largely independent of political maneuvering, his Social Security plan has already been axed, Medicare screams solely for a fiscal fix (the dreaded tax increase) that won’t happen, private healthcare accounts are a political nonentity, and on and on.

Which leaves foreign policy, the aforementioned cause for (more) worry (than usual), given the bang-up job Mr. Bush has always done in this arena. Something’s brewing, and from this crowd it can’t be good.

Now take Nancy Pelosi -- please

I guarantee you there are a couple hundred Democratic members of the House of Representatives scratching their heads this morning, wondering why in God’s name they ever cast a vote for Nancy Pelosi as the public face of their party.

She just made an appearance on “Meet the Press,” and it was a disaster. Worse than that, it was a lasting embarrassment for any progressive-minded viewer hoping to see something other than a profile in stuttering, stammering, defensiveness, vacillation and evasion. I haven’t felt that uncomfortable since watching Roger Mudd ask Ted Kennedy about his day.

She said nothing with conviction, sitting instead visibly trying to recall her talking points cleared by a horde of nervous, focus-grouping advisers. As one sad example Tim Russert gave her the opportunity three times -- three times -- to pledge she would honorably and proudly work to repeal Bush’s inane tax cuts as Speaker, and she responded with empty, circumlocutory nothingness on each occasion.

Her answers concerning Iraq were almost unintelligible but clearly contradictory; her solution to the energy crisis was stilted, bumper-sticker pabulum having something to do with shifting our focus from the Middle East to the Midwest -- get it? clever, huh?; her demotion of “investigations” to only “hearings” into White House crimes was a bizarre and muddled distinction; and the rest of what she didn’t say with excessive strain wasn’t worth hearing, either.

Were I a Democratic congressional candidate I would be running away from Nancy Pelosi as fast as I was running against George W. Bush. Her projection of party timidity and uncertainty was that bad.

In 1994 Republicans had Newt Gingrich, a slick, bold, convincing, walking promise of real changes to come, whether real or not, smart or not. In 2006 Democrats are stuck -- or are they? -- with the gutless Nancy Pelosi, a quivering reed of unpromising fear and paralysis.

She’s regarded by the opposition as its secret weapon. But you know it, I know it, even rank-and-file Democrats know it, which makes her something less than a secret force of internal destruction. So why can’t professional Democratic strategists figure it out?

If you doubt my assessment of her agonizing appearance on “Meet the Press” you can read the transcript here (yet to be posted as of this writing), though I would suggest you first take a slug or two of fermented fortification. It’ll rattle you. Really.

A couple days ago, because of Congress’ alternate bungling and inaction on pressing issues such as gas prices, lobbying reform, illegal immigration and Baby Boomer entitlements, Howard Kurtz of the WP asked if the once-venerated institution had “become something of a joke.”

No doubt virtually all of Mr. Kurtz’s readers harrumphed in the affirmative, pausing only long enough to question the modifying phrase, “something of.” Of course Congress has become a joke -- an unmitigated, unqualified joke. One more display of comedic incompetence and it’ll almost be up to White House standards.

This morning’s NYT has a worthwhile postmortem on the latest Congressional joke, that of the short-lived, stingy bribe to gasoline consumers. As the piece summarizes, “The rise and fall of the Republican $100 rebate offers a window on how Washington sometimes works in a slapdash way, featuring in this case … lawmakers desperate to hang onto their jobs.”

“Slapdash” and “desperate” are on-target descriptors of this Congress, desperate as its Republican masters are to retain their majority status in any remotely feasible, slapdash way that presents itself. Yet these traits are merely symptoms of a much deeper sickness within the controlling GOP.

For all its needling of Democrats and their lack of a plan for this and lack of a plan for that, the Republican Party is itself utterly devoid of ideas. The only idea it had to begin with was the hoary notion of tax cuts for all that ails, and now that it has whittled revenue to the bone there is no trick left in its grab bag of cure-alls. The best the party can do is shove existing tax cuts into the next decade and hope voters mistake the repetition of a bad idea for positive action.

It won’t work. In plotting their tax-cuts-ueber-alles course for a permanent Republican majority (even the $100 rebate amount was based on a nine-month recision of a federal tax), Karl Rove and all the little Rovian minions on Capitol Hill forgot that voters have become accustomed to the quaint New Deal notion of the government doing some actual governing from time to time.

The extension of capital gains cuts is to protecting consumers at the pump what golf is to botany, and voters know it. Yet that’s all Congressional Republicans can get together on in the midst of numerous and enduring crises.

The GOP has played itself out. Its singular fix has run its course. The institution it has controlled for a mere twelve years has indeed become a joke, but it’s already an old one.

Otherworldly politics

When the going gets tough for Republicans, when voters start dumping scorn and ridicule on them by the bucketful, when amateurish visions of world reordering darken, when gross fiscal mismanagement defines their domestic agenda, when new criminal probes and indictments become almost daily yawners, and when staggering incompetence settles in as the least insulting attribute critics can think of applying, then tough Republicans do what they always do -- they propose another tax cut.

In a pinch, they sure are a creative bunch.

True to form, “President Bush and congressional Republicans agreed yesterday,” reports the Washington Post, “on a $70 billion package of tax-cut extensions that they hope will help halt the deterioration of their political fortunes….

“In 2003, Congress passed a measure to lower the tax rate on most dividends to 15 percent from as high as 38.6 percent and to lower rates on most capital gains from 20 percent to 15 percent. That measure is set to expire in 2008 but would be extended through 2010 under yesterday’s agreement, at a cost to the Treasury of $21 billion over five years and an additional $30 billion between 2011 and 2015.”

Ho hum. Another day, another $51 billion in the red and another making of the wealthy wealthier.

But let us not scoff to excess, for this is professional politics coupled with a sincere concern for all those truck drivers and waitresses worried about creeping tax rates on their stock dividends two years from now, as they suck it up literally and figuratively at the extortionate gas pump today.

“Particularly at a time when Americans are paying more at the pump, the president believes the last thing they need is for Washington to take more of their hard-earned dollars out of their pockets,” said the White House’s exhausted spinmeister, Scott McClellan.

“We are going to have a bill,” declared House Majority Leader John Boehner. “The president really wants a tax bill.”

Heaven forfend that we do nothing about today’s problems by not worsening tomorrow’s. That’s the kind of courageous Republican foresight that has made America what it is: reeling in debt and teetering on the precipice of financial catastrophe.

But perhaps Democratic Senator Kent Conrad summarized carefree, happy-go-lucky Republican-dominated Washington best: “You talk about completely detached from reality, that’s this place.”

The folks at RealMorons.org may be a plague on America, but I must admit I’m sure going to miss their entertaining ways should they get ousted this November.

Which is to say, whose day wasn’t made when Congressional Republicans announced their “plan to mail $100 checks to voters to ease the burden of high gasoline prices,” which, as the New York Times reported, “is eliciting more scorn than gratitude from the very people it was intended to help.”

If Republicans were looking for a groundswell of reaction, they got it.

“Aides for several Republican senators reported a surge of calls and e-mail messages from constituents,” although the temperament of those calls and e-mails wasn’t exactly what the big-spending lawmaulers were anticipating. “The conservatives think it is socialist bunk, and the liberals think it is conservative trickery,” said one Republican aide.

Of course the proposal was neither socialist or conservative -- it was just classic pandering -- but at least the electorate was, for once, uniformly on the same page when it came to recognizing cheap political slop when they heard it.

Because more than a case of transparent pandering, it was even more transparently insulting.

We can all be bought, I suppose, but while Congressional Republicans insure the continuation of campaign bribery by oil companies with reciprocal billion-dollar subsidies, the webmasters at RealMorons.org thought they could save themselves by signing paltry $100 checks to individual voters -- even those who don’t drive.

In brief, the proposed payoff demonstrated what Republican pols really think of American voters -- that they’re as stupid and venal as the Grand Old Party itself. Yet given what GOP strategists have gotten away with in the past few years, it’s easy to see how this lulu of an idiotic idea came to them naturally.