Of course she was wearing 25 lbs of body armour and when she went ouside the Green Zone she was accompanied by a lead car with four body guards and the car that she was in had another three bodyguards to protect her.

She should do ok on this trip. Everything in Iraq is so much better now.

Troubled

oh come on, leave Malkin alone.. we want her preaching for the other side, don’t we? She just makes the rethugs look soooo reasonable and rational… she’s almost as fun as Pammy.

Pammy Vlogging from Baghdad. That would be an amusing notion if it weren’t for the real possibility that she’d drag her kids along.

aaarrrrrgggghhhhh….

Of course, it doesn’t matter what she experiences. It doesn’t matter who she talks to. We all know how this is going to turn out– Malkin will say things are far more peaceful and normal than the “liberal media” says it is, the only soldiers she will quote or reference will be those who think the media is biased and that things are going well in Iraq, and the only Iraqis she’ll quote or reference will feel that there’s real progress being made.

The only reason she’s doing this is to give her nonsense some veneer of legitimacy– so she’ll be able to respond to any criticism of her war cheerleading with “WELL, I was THERE! I SAW it!! When was the last time YOU went to Iraq, HUH!?!?”

This is a farce with a foregone conclusion, and it’s going to serve to make Ms. Malkin even more insufferable.

I have increased my donation by $5000.07 in hopes that truth will be found and brought forth.

OMFG!!!!!! That is so cool!

period.

The federal (or state governments, for that matter) should never use our tax dollars to assuage any criminal’s guilt! These people took an oath to uphold the Constitution and our laws! Mebbe all of these criminals could have thought about their family and legacy before committing the crime(s).

I believe, and most scholars seem to agree, that public corruption is the single most pernicious threat to a democratic society, and must be punished rigorously (Blub said this).

Yeah, they should be. But we americans are too hard in the punishment and revenge department, imho. We talk about forgiveness and rehabilitation, but I don’t think we much believe it. Cunningham has provided his own humiliation, some of it in the form of those pathetic letters he sent from jail to the reporter who put him there.

Let it be.

Forgive me, but it’s not a question of humiliation or revenge, no matter how “pathetic.” (You’d be surprised how pathetically you can weep and moan and cry when your house of cards comes tumbling down around your neck…) It’s a question of justice. He had all 4 trotters in the public trough, and then he shit in it. Nobody held a gun to his head. Why should we be more sorry for him than for any thug?

First, if Cunningham had been working as an executive for a corporation from which he’d stolen, or through which he’d conducted illegal activities, he’d have been sacked and sued for breach of contract, damages and denied any pension.

Second, if there is no threat to one’s pension, there is no disincentive not to take advantage of the public since the risk-reward equation doesn’t exist in the case of minor offenses.

I do not object to Cunningham’s continued receipt of a military pension as he earned it during active duty and IRR. But he forfeited a reasonable claim to a pension as a member of Congress by violating the public’s trust.

There could be as many as 65 members of Congress implicated in the Abramoff scandal; should we pay all these folks who have schemed to abuse our trust a pension until their deaths?