Pennsylvania: George W. Bush

At the LA Times.

If anything it proves that not all Republicans are infected with teh crazie. Good for those who still inhabit reality. Take a look:
Amid a rebirth of conservative activism that could help Republicans win elections next year, some party insiders now fear that extreme rhetoric and conspiracy theories coming from the angry reaches of the conservative base are undermining the GOP's broader credibility and casting it as the party of the paranoid.

Such insiders point to theories running rampant on the Internet, such as the idea that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is thus ineligible to be president, or that he is a communist, or that his allies want to set up Nazi-like detention camps for political opponents.

* By "old" I mean in relation to the ages of those with whom they, um, interact.

• Iowa school officials strip-search five teenage girls. Regarding a recent Supreme Court ruling against the legality of such strip-searches the school district superintendent Dan Crozier claimed that there are different interpretations of what the term strip-search means. Note: in the Supreme Court case the girl in question was made to strip to her bra and panties and pull those garments away from her body for inspection. In this case, one girl was made to strip completely naked so, yeah, I guess it's different...
• Family Values married CA Assemblyman caught on a hot mic

Instead of threatening them with inclusion on a list of countries to invade or calling them an "evil empire" President Obama dealt with North Korea's detention of two American journalists by sending Bill Clinton to negotiate and secure their release.  Isn't it amazing how diplomacy works if a president is actually willing to use the device?  George W. Bush, with his cowboy mentality, disdained and rejected the use of diplomats to solve problems.  He preferred, instead, to use the Army.

What a breath of fresh air.

Woven into an article in the Times describing former Prime Minister Tony Blair's efforts for a private inquiry into Britain's role in Bush's Iraq war is this enticing tidbit - one that only reinforces what we already knew:
This news comes amid new evidence to suggest that Mr Blair knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

A memo dated January 31, 2003, by Sir David Manning, then Mr Blair’s policy adviser, outlines how President Bush told Mr Blair he had decided on a start date for the war — almost two months before the invasion.

Paraphrasing the President’s comments at the meeting, Sir David noted: “The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled (sic) in for March 10.