Some favorite columns of the week

Joe Conason on "jackboot radio" in San Francisco. (Yes, San Francisco!)

Like many right-wingers, the KSFO crew can dish it out, but they can't take it. Their feelings get hurt when anyone slaps back.

Gene Lyons on Al Gore:

Captive to oil and coal money, one of America’s major political parties dabbles in Stalinist-style pseudo-science, denouncing as "elitist" anybody capable of reading the handwriting on the wall. It’s enough to make anybody not consumed with partisanship wish the decent, earnest, intelligent protagonist of "An Inconvenient Truth" were president of the United States.

Jules Witcover on a conciliatory Bush:

It is with this apparently sobering realization that unilateral action bears unacceptable risks in terms of success and acceptance in the international community that Bush embarks on his latest overseas visit. ...

The earlier Bush saber-rattling clearly has been cooled off by the reality in Iraq, the prospect of a much smaller "coalition of the willing" for any U.S. military action against North Korea or Iran, or any resumption of a Cold War with a Russian regime.

John Dean on Bush, Dark Lord Cheney and the unilateral Executive theory of Presidential power:

Given Bush's extraordinarily broad claim of Presidential power, he tends to deem any law that conflicts with his plans "unconstitutional." And despite the Supreme Court's recent Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision clearly and sharply repudiating this view of his powers, Bush is likely to go right on doing so.

In truth, Bush himself does not have a clue about what he is doing, for this ploy is being guided by Vice President Cheney's office; I am told it is David Addington leading the way. Though carried out by Bush, it is best seen as another of Cheney's undertakings to enhance presidential power by neutering Congress. And it is working.

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