Keeping Things Interesting

For me, at least, this weekend was very interesting.

You had the fantastic news of the amazingly successful election in Iraq alongside lots of stories pushed by the President and his supporters about how things there really aren't as bad as opponents want to paint them. Even though people like me who actually pay attention have known for some time that things have been progressing reasonably well there, the rest of the country that only catches the Nightly News now and then only hears the continuous criticism and Bush-bashing.

So this apparently gets the Dems and their friends at the NY Times down a bit, so here we go - time to call Bush a criminal again. They made public a classified story to the effect that for a brief time after 9/11, Bush authorized wiretaps and surveillance of suspected terrorists and their sympathizers in the US without obtaining a court order.

For me, that's not the real story. The real story that of course nobody in the so-called "mainstream media" will tell is that someone in the very small group of administration and congressional leadership (Republicans and Democrats, mind you) leaked this information to the Times. Which is, ahem, a felony. The leak was so obviously politically motivated that it seems like it wouldn't take too long to find the leaker - just check out the Democrat congresspersons who were briefed on the temporary policy, and you'll probably find your criminal rather quickly.

That Bush did what he did doesn't bother me in the slightest. Applying simple logic and reasoning to the situation, it's very easy to come up with the reasons - he felt it was necessary to protect the country. Also, it's been reported that those surveillance activities actually saved us from attacks that were being planned after 9/11. And whether it was lawful or not, no innocent party was harmed or abused in the process. Finally, a scandal generally requires that the perpetrator is acting for personal or political gain - in this case, everything was done above-board, with full disclosure to the proper judges and congressional leaders, and obviously completely with the safety of Americans at heart. Stupid people in Washington are calling for an investigation - unless you're going to investigate who leaked the story, I say drop it and move on to more important matters.

Anyway, we also saw the Colts lose their first game. It was sad, but predictable. I actually thought they were going to pull out the win until Peyton got called for the intentional grounding and then the Chargers' backup running back caught the defense asleep a couple minutes later. It was sort of disheartening to see the whole team lose focus like that and let the perfect season get away from them.

Then it was interesting that I got to the hotel room last night just in time to see Rex Grossman come in at QB for the Bears and proceed to break the game open against Atlanta. Although he looked good, I don't really think they needed him last night. From watching the Falcons on television last night suffering in the near-zero temperatures at Soldier Field, I figured they just wanted to get the game over with and go someplace warm anyway.

And we got Tim home this weekend. Both a good and bad thing; good because it's nice to see him, and bad because the conflicts have already begun. In the immortal words of Rodney King, "Why can't we all just get along?"