Sometimes the Cows Do Come Home to Roost

Ahh...not much to say this week poker-wise. I did stumble into a 4th place finish in a Limit O8 MTT last Thursday, but the night was still a loser overall. Mostly due to the O8 MTT being a $5 buy-in, while busting short of the money in an $11r, a $20+2, and giving up five buyins in a $5r...but I digress.

Likely no poker at all this week, since my band has a gig tomorrow night. Which reminds me, please visit our site and check out our new recording "Horse".

What I really wanted to stop by for was to share a lil' bit of ye olde schadenfreude, and one of my favorite recipes, at that.

See, for most of this entire decade, those on the right have been defending, and mightly so, I must add, the former Bush administration's warrantless secret wiretapping and eavesdropping of American citizens. And yes, you can be on the right of a lot of issues and still be a member of the Democratic Party, because in the end, if you're a politician, you're more likely to be a member of whichever party is most likely to help you get elected.

That's why legions of Texas politicians from the end of the civil war, through 1980, were Democrats. It ain't because they were libruls, that's for sure. But after the Civil War, you couldn't get elected in the South for 100 years if you were a Republican. Which brings us to today's hero goat, Jane Harman. Essentially, Ms. Harmon's been, for all intents and purposes, a complete Republican through and through when it comes to toeing that party's line on matters of dollars and cents, but is too far to the left when it comes to abortion to be electable as a Republican.

Jane, you see, is not only one of the wealthiest members of Congress, but also the Democratic Party's most vociferous supporter of the warrantless wiretapping program. She's been quoted as saying, "I believe the program is essential to U.S. national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities." And when the press blew up the secret program, she not called the whistleblowers "despicable", she argued for curtailing freedom of the press under the 1st Amendment.

Well, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out yesterday on Salon, it's funny what happens when the shoe is on the other foot.

I asked Attorney General Holder to...investigate whether other members of Congress or other innocent Americans might have been subject to this same treatment. I call it an abuse of power in the letter I wrote him this morning. . . .

I'm just very disappointed that my country -- I'm an American citizen just like you are -- could have permitted what I think is a gross abuse of power in recent years. I'm one member of Congress who may be caught up in it, and I have a bully pulpit and I can fight back. I'm thinking about others who have no bully pulpit, who may not be aware, as I was not, that someone is listening in on their conversations, and they're innocent Americans.

NOW, Jane Harman is against wiretapping? NOW, Jane Harman wants a full government investigation, now that SHE is the one being taped? Taped under a court-issued warrant, I might add?

Hey Jane, go fuckin' drown in the bathtub of your own hypocrisy, why don't ya. You're FOR warrantless wiretapping, yet you claim yourself to be a victim of a "gross abuse of power" when you were tapped under a fully court-approved warrant. I've got a better idea, why don't we ship YOU got Guantanamo, since you seem to think you're no longer subject to the same laws as the rest of us Americans.