A few threads back, yours truly did a pretty mean bit about how neocons are basically worse than parrots, "echoing" the comments and ideas of others, without using their own brains....

Congressman Joe Pitts (R, Pa) has never really been known as an intellectual.  And since he broke his promise to abide by the term limits in the old Gingrich Contract with America, even the Republicans don't think too much of his honesty.

Add me to the list of people who feel that way.  Here's the honorable Mr. Pitts on the venerable Town Hall web site:

"It is also important to understand why these brutal killers have chosen to make Iraq the central front in the war on terror.  Having lost their base of operations in Afghanistan due to the exemplary success of coalition forces in Operation Enduring Freedom, the terrorists are now seeking to find safe harbor elsewhere."

I was going to post this as a comment to a diary entry from Number 6, but that entry seems to have disappeared.

Just wanted to point out 2 things about our Declaration of Independence:

1. It specifically says "That to secure these rights [life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc], Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."  Notice that it doesn't say that government is derived from GOD.

2. There was an experiment years ago in which some people had the Declaration of Independence typed up on ordinary paper.  They took it to a supermarket parking lot as if it were a petition, and randomly asked people to sign it.  Almost all refused, and many got very angry at these commie/revolutionary ideas.

Take a guess: what and who do you think the sources are for these (scroll down for the answers):

1. "When 30 million are for something and 30 million are against it, things balance out and nothing happens. That is how things are with us. We are the world's Pariah not because we do not have the courage to resist, but rather because out entire national energy is wasted in eternal and unproductive squabbling between the right and the left. Our way only goes downward, and today one can already predict when we will fall into the abyss."

2. "We may at times during the gray preceding months have looked at the situation with a grim expression, but we never resigned ourselves to the blows of fate. The opposite....Quietly and without a lot of excitement, great things have been accomplished. The enemy's campaign of nerves is having no effect on us."

 ...
"Our dead have left obligations for us, and we the living are under obligation to do their will. Anyone who doubts victory has no right to be part of our community.  Whoever pays attention to what the enemy says is a traitor to our cause. Who harms our war efforts by passing on enemy rumors sins against our people, for which....soldiers have died heroic deaths."

3. "Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power"

4. "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the  statesmanship of the day."

5. "I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts."
   

With the departure of A~ as the official administrator of Watching The Watchers, the task of admin work has been taken on by Lee Russ, and to an extent, yep, old #6 has some creative stuff to now add...

How do you know that Wal-Mart has decided to get serious about "fighting back" against its critics?  Well, when two major newspapers run OpEd pieces by "respected" names, both extolling the virtues of the "retailer you can't avoid but would love to," I'd say it's a pretty good sign.

So here's a big cheer and a solid tribute to the Wal-Mart (W-M) weasels of the week, John Tierney and Sebastian Mallaby.

I don't normally talk politics with my best buddy, because I figured she and I pretty much thought along the same lines.  Boy, was I shocked yesterday when she told me that she was so angry because the ACLU was trying to take Christmas away.

Remember the move "As Good As It Gets" from a few years back?  At one point in the movie, Jack Nicholson, whose life is being ruined by both obsessive-compulsive disorder and a crappy personality looks at a waiting room full of mental patients and says "What if this is as good as it gets?"

Well I just read a small piece in the UK's The Observer titled "'Hangover hospitals' could go nationwide" that brings that phrase to mind. Story here