Per Brian Beutler, the Democrats are passing around the Hill the chart below, which demonstrates how the Republican desire to delay the Sotomayor confirmation compares to SCOTUS confirmations of years past:

Torture doesn’t work. Actual intelligence professionals-not armchair generals, or folks who think 24 is based on a true story-know this, and have been saying so for years. And last Sunday we learned that despite their protests to the contrary, the Bush administration knew this, too.

I’m not brimming with hope that those associated with the Bush administration (and its related atrocities) will have to pay the piper. But attempts are being made and that’s certainly better than nothing. 
John Conyers, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has delivered a subpoena to Karl Rove. Rove is expected to appear in court next Monday to “testify regarding his role in the Bush Administration’s politicization of the Department of Justice, including the US Attorney firings and the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.”
Rove ignored the last …

The other day in the Washington Post, Dan Froomkin provided us all with a one-stop catalog of, um, catalogs of the failures of the Bush presidency, page after page of quotes from politicos and pundits near and far, the vast majority incredulous about just what has been going on for the last eight years. For the time-pressed, he gives us the Reader’s Digest version early on:
He took the nation to a war of choice under false pretenses — and left troops in harm’s way on two fields of battle. He …

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is bragging about a phone call he made to George W. Bush that made the U.S. abstain from voting for a U.N. resolution to stop the Gaza fighting. Israel didn’t think the plan provided for their security. Condoleezza Rice had helped craft the proposal and appealed to other countries to support it. Even if Olmert hadn’t run off at the mouth, it would have been obvious that something behind the scenes had happened when the U.S. didn’t vote for something Rice cared about so much. …

Paul Krugman reported having a spot of trouble the other day:
Unusually, I’m having a vocabulary problem. There has to be some word for the kind of person who considers his mild discomfort the equivalent of torture, crippling injury, or death for other people. But I can’t think of it.
What brings this to mind is this from Alberto Gonzales:
“I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”
I can certainly understand how such a statement would leave one dumbfounded. However, I’m more than happy to suggest …

Okay, day after Christmas, back at it. Paul Krugman graced us with this in yesterday’s New York Times:
…President-elect Barack Obama, riding a wave of revulsion over what conservatism has wrought, has said that he wants to “make government cool again.”
Before Mr. Obama can make government cool, however, he has to make it good.
True enough, as the last eight years have stripped a lot of the “good” out of government. For inspiration, Krugman looks to the New Deal and the wave of reforms swept in along with it:
How did F.D.R. manage …

This oughta blow your mind:
And while he will miss many things about Washington, he won’t miss “the petty name-calling,” Mr. Bush said.
“I came with the idea of changing the tone in Washington, and frankly didn’t do a very good job of it,” he said.
I…just…wow. Wow. This is understatement on a scale so epic it’s impossible to express. I can only find adequate descriptive power in pictures:

From The Editors, the best explanation of Bush’s shoe-dodging I’ve yet seen:
Judged as a display of alertness and ninja prowess, the President’s dodge is, indeed, impressive.  But George W. Bush has spent most of his life fucking things up horribly, and then escaping any consequences for his incompetence and indifference.  This is who he is.  What you have seen is not a moment of quick thinking, it was  the man’s essence.  He always escapes unharmed.

From the “not really news to those who’ve been paying attention” files comes this little ditty from UPI:
 
An investigation of the U.S. Interior Department found serious flaws related to 15 decisions on policies for species at risk of becoming extinct, said the report delivered to Congress by Inspector General Earl E. Devaney.
One of those decisions involved reducing the number of waterways considered critical habitat for the endangered bull trout, The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported Tuesday.
The report describes “something akin to a secret society residing within the Interior Department that …