More Arlen

Ooooo - Arlen's mad! Not at me of course, because he knows that when I said he was as soft as soggy puffed wheat, I was only being fair to his record. No, Arlen Spectre, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee which, back in olden days, would oversee the Justice Department, is mad a Dick Cheney.

But to be fair, who's not mad at Dick Cheney? I mean, his dearest supporters would probably take a few good whacks if you threw a blanket over him and handed them a baseball bat.
But Cheney's been even more of a Dick lately. Since Spectre has had the most meagre possible glint of being an American and questioning all the illegal activities of the executive, he's a problem for them.

"One Republican with close ties to the administration, who was granted anonymity to discuss the thinking at the White House, said Mr. Specter had been increasingly nettlesome to the administration with his persistent criticism, especially of the surveillance programs."

"Nettlesome?" Because he's raised entirely toothless objections to wildly illegal activities? Because he's never failed to back down or tow the line? Cheney thinks that's "nettlesome?" It sure tells you what he thinks of real oversight.

Arlen was going to subpoena the telecoms to come to his committee and tell what phone records they illegally gave to the Junta. So Dick went to all the other Repubs on the committee (by the way, Republicans like to call the Democratic Party the "Democrat Party" so in the spirit of bi-partisanship I'm calling them the "Repub Party") and got them to agree not to call the phone companies. Without telling Arlen.

And oooooo! Arlen is madder than a debutante getting the wrong fork at her coming-out party. So he did what any two-fisted hunk of seething senior Senate committee Chairman would do.
He wrote a letter.

Oh. But he released it to the press! That's gotta count for something, right?

"I was surprised, to say the least, that you sought to influence, really determine, the action of the committee without calling me first, or at least calling me at some point," Mr. Specter wrote. "This was especially perplexing since we both attended the Republican senators caucus lunch yesterday and I walked directly in front of you on at least two occasions en route from the buffet to my table."

Yes, there was contact made at the buffet table, but no explanations were forthcoming.

But hey: let me stop for a moment and prove that I've got the journalistic chops to hold my own with the MSM guys. I'll get to the bottom of the story, and highlight the important aspects of the tale so that we can really get to the core of it. In other words, what did Spectre have at the buffet?

"In an interview, Mr. Specter described his relationship with Mr. Cheney as generally friendly and cordial. But he was clearly put out by the vice president's handling of the issue and his failure to pull Mr. Specter aside as he made several trips to the buffet for tuna salad and hard-boiled egg, salad dressing and fruit."

Hah! "Tuna salad and hard-boiled egg, salad dressing and fruit." You expect us to believe that? Please. They've really gone too far now.

Cheney and his Junta cronies think the constitution and the congress are a big joke. And when a limp noodle like Spectre even makes a faint meow, they go behind his back like the prom committee backstabbing the homecoming queen.

A closer examination of that lunch reveals that Arlen even eats soft. Just a sad spectacle of what degradation our great country has sunk to.