More politics

I thought that htis was going to be a very short post because although several significant events happened today, I wasn't happy about them and I didn't have a lot to say about them. First, John Roberts was confirmed as the 17th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. As I have said before, while he is too conservative for my taste, as he is replacing William Rehnquist, another conservative, he probably will not move the court so I was not outraged about it. I do have to say however, that I didn't like the fact that he awaited confirmation in the company of Mr. Bush in the White House. That seems just a little too friendly to a person that I really don't like. I can accept the fact that the judges had lunch with the President before the confirmation, that is just ceremony. The Judicial Branch should not be friendly with members of the other branches. That could too easily lead to conflicts of interest. Its difficult to rule against someone with whom you are friendly.

I was happy yesterday when Tom Delay was indicted and had to give up his Majority Leader post. I thought that the fact that a senior member of Congress could be brought down might temper some of the actions of the Republican led House. I forgot to consider the fact that the House is full of pro-business Republicans who only think of the bottom line. The House of Representatives today passed a bill that would gut the Endangered Species Act. The Senate however has not acted on companion legislation so luckily nothing can happen until the Senate acts and a committee comes together to rectify differences between the two bills. Because of this enviromentalists have months to convince the Senate that what the House did was a very bad thing.

Judith Miller finally came to her senses and decided to release the name of the source that revealed to her that the wife of Joseph Wilson IV, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. She has been in jail since July 6th for refusing to tell Special Prosecuter Patrick Fitzgerald who her source was. Today she admitted that her source was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. So in the course of the investigation it has been revealed that the people that told reporters about Valerie Plame were both Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. I seem to remember President Bush saying explicitly at the beginning of the investigation that it wasn't Rove or Libby. Of course he also said that anyone who named names would be fired. This changed to anyone who is found guilty of a crime would be fired. There is nothing like integrity.

The American death toll in Iraq is 49 for September and 1933 in total.