Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Perhaps the most striking aspect of president George W. Bush is his inability to actually take responsibility for anything. I'm not sure quite where this comes from -- daddy, drink or denial, or some gruesome combination of the three.

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

For crying out loud, hasn't this family done enough damage? Can't they just leave us alone for a while?

-- STEVE BENEN

This is just a guess, but I'd put money down that George W. Bush will preemptively pardon Harriet Miers and Alberto Gonzales on Christmas Eve. Bush's father pardoned the Iran-Contra crew on Christmas Eve 1992, and it seems like an appropriate precedent for the son. The bigger question is whether he will preemptively pardon Karl Rove. Rove is certainly behaving like a man without a care in the world, which is strange considering that a Washington grand jury is issuing subpoenas as we speak. And, no, there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it. A president's pardon power is absolute.

-- BOOMAN

The truth is there's nothing "soft" about diplomacy, wherein you try to get the other fellow to do what you want. Madeleine Albright had the courage to go to Pakistan and denounce the Pakistani-allied Taliban in 1998 for "their despicable treatment of women and children and their general lack of respect for human dignity." Try telling Richard "Bulldozer" Holbrooke that there's something soft about forcing an end to ethnic cleansing a civil war. Was one of these activities more masculine or feminine than the other? It's absurd to think in these terms.

-- SPENCER ACKERMAN

Did Barack Obama just break his first campaign promise?

-- NICK BAUMANN

Yes, campaign promises are a dime a dozen and few people believe most of them.

But even for someone who promised the moon to so many, Barack Obama's campaign promises are being quietly shelved or thrown under the bus at an unusual rate.

-- RICK MORAN

My advice for the left: Get some historical perspective. There has rarely been an effective president - Franklin D. Roosevelt being a classic example - that didn't tick off or confound his own followers from time to time. That's the nature of governance. It's an intricate business that requires savvy pragmatism. As evidenced by his national security picks, Obama is demonstrating that trait already. These are calculations that we can believe in.

-- DICK POLMAN

Remember when Obama was insane? It wasn't that long ago. Remember when Obama mentioned on the campaign trail that he would attack terrorists in Pakistan if he had actionable intelligence, and everyone on the right went ape shit about how that would be a violation of Pakistani sovereignty?

-- STEVEN D

One of my theories is that anti-Semitism itself destroys the anti-Semite. The real problem with letting a hatred possess you isn't just that you may eventually destroy the object of your hatred, but that you’ll eventually destroy yourself. It's a peculiar curse. . . . why [would] the Mumbai attackers would waste precious manpower, ammunition and operational planning to kill and torture a handful of Jews?

-- RICHARD FERNANDEZ

Republicans lost because they were in charge of the country for the better part of the last decade, and their governance has been an unmitigated disaster. This is not rocket science. You can argue that democrats should share some of the blame for some of the policies, and you would not get any disagreement from me, but that does not change the fact that the Republicans were in charge, and blew it.

-- JOHN COLE

The American press and American public — with the exception of some steadfast loyalists — now have Nixon to kick around some more. And for good reason.

-- JOE GANDELMAN

We all remember the hanging chads of 2000. Many will recall the ballots that mysteriously appeared in King County during the Washington gubernatorial recount of 2004. Now in the Minnesota recount county officials0 found “171 ballots . . . . that weren’t counted on election night.

This ought not be a partisan issue. A safe, secure, verifiable, and trustworthy voting process is a core underpinning of the legitimacy of the democratic form of government. It’s time for election technology to deliver a system that doesn’t invite cheating when its close.

-- PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE

Where is the statement expressing outrage from the NRA that a humble American gun owner like Plaxico, who was just trying to protect himself and his family by carrying a hand gun, is being mercilessly persecuted by The Man and his Draconian gun control laws?

-- CAJUN BOY