Quote of the day.

Former Grand Inquisitor Attorney General John Ashcroft…

“I don’t have a mark on my conscience.”

I suppose you can't mark what you don't have.

Yep.

Monsters, alright.

Headlines.

Attorney general won't share destroyed tape info

Here we go again. John Kerry used to get a good response to his promise that he'd appoint an Attorney General whose name wasn't John Ashcroft. Turns out the problem isn't the name, it's the namer. Speaking of whom...

Roaming, thieving monkeys sought in roundup

No relation, I'm sure.

Congress authorizes war funds and sends bill to Bush

A drag, sure, but let's face it - he was going to keep his damn war going if it meant emptying the Pentagon and having a yard sale for the office furniture. The people who would get hurt in the short run aren't in Congress. In the long run the Bush program to dismantle the military establishment in favor of an all-mercenary force would be abetted. I don't like it, but I get it.

House votes to outlaw CIA waterboarding

Thus making it illegal to act unlawfully. It's really come to this, hasn't it?

Men carry breast cancer genes, too

As usual, it's all about us. Can the baby-blue ribbons be far behind?

What he said.

Matt Yglesias...

This is already dull conventional wisdom, but it seems to me that the rumored new guy at the Justice Department, Michael Mukasey, stands a good chance of rescuing the DOJ from its Gonzalez-era status as a cesspool of depravity and incompetence and bringing us back to the glory days of John Ashcroft when one primarily worried about the Attorney-General's ludicrously wrongheaded ideology.

There's bound, I suppose, to be an Attorney General, and it's certain that any Bush nominee will be unacceptable to patriots for any number of reasons. The promise of competent mechanical administration of DOJ for a year or so seems to be the most we can realistically hope for.

Funny thing. Four years ago, one of John Kerry's most consistent crowd pleasers was the promise to appoint an Attorney General who's name wasn't John Ashcroft. Now the Ashcroft era has morphed into the "glory days."

Only 490 days, folks.