WTF type of program was deemed this critically important by both sides that warranted this type of opinion/comment/behavior and action? This is something even more sinister than I think we can imagine.

Attorney General Ashcroft was not merely ill – he was delirious.

Snow: Ashcroft Wasn’t That Ill, It Wasn’t Like ‘His Brain Didn’t Work’

Really, Dr. Snow?

Comey had a message.

When Card and Gonzales came a callin’ on Ascroft..

bringing sweetness and mercy

to his ICU bed.

Attorney General Ashcroft was clinically delirious.

[Temporarily out o’ his gourd.]

Georgie’s frantic for a “Get out of jail free” law for his domestic espionage.

That’s why “FISA reform” keeps oozing out of the Rethug’s agenda.

Abu Gonzales and Card waited to ask Ashcroft’s OK…

until the Attorney General was delirious

and had formally delegated his official powers .

Diagnostic criteria for 293.0 Delirium Due to.. Medical Condition]

A. Disturbance of consciousness (i.e., reduced clarity of awareness of the environment) with reduced ability to focus, sustain, or shift attention.

B. A change in cognition (such as memory deficit, disorientation, language disturbance) or the development of a perceptual disturbance that is not better accounted for by a preexisting, established, or evolving dementia.

C. The disturbance develops over a short period of time (usually hours to days) and tends to fluctuate during the course of the day.

D. There is evidence from the history, physical examination, or laboratory findings that the disturbance is caused by the direct physiological consequences of a general medical condition.

Ashcroft had been in intensive care at George Washington University hospital for “over a week” before Gonzales and Card paid him a visit. Mrs. Ashcroft had banned “all visitors and all phone calls.” Comey described Ashcroft’s condition on the day of Card and Gonzales’s visit:

Mrs. Ashcroft was standing by the hospital bed, Mr. Ashcroft was lying down in the bed, the room was darkened. And I immediately began speaking to him, trying to orient him as to time and place, and try to see if he could focus on what was happening, and it wasn’t clear to me that he could. He seemed pretty bad off.

Ashcroft’s chief of staff also personally requested that Comey “not resign until Mr. Ashcroft was well enough to resign with me. He was very concerned that Mr. Ashcroft was not well enough to understand fully what was going on.”

[h/t TP]

orientation

Awareness of one’s location in the continuum of time and space and of the identity of one’s self and familiar others.

Also: disorientation, oriented, oriented x 3, oriented time three, oriented in all spheres, oriented to time, place, and person

current thread

McCaskill and Webb both voted against the Reid-Feingold. After the netroots went to back for them both, they have already forgotten us.

Yup. Boy how they can let you down. I’m going to go ahead and vent here even though I’m EPU’d. I don’t care.

Crappity crap. At least Dean hasn’t let us down. The villified, forgotten Dean. The one who started it all, he’s still in there pitching. I still love you, Howard.

Quzi @ 114

“an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source.” — great quote!

Comey is my new hero! Fitz or Comey for AG in ‘08…or better yet (I’m so tired of politicians in both parties) Fitz/Comey in ‘08

be still my heart

No pubs. No, no, please. Unfortunately, they have lost all credibility with me and cannot be trusted, IMO. I’m sorry to have to tar decent people with the brush of the radicals, but those who’ve been tarred need to take a hard look at their party and what the radicals have done to it and the nation. And REPUDIATE them outright! Just as we would repudiate our own party had they done this to us and to the children of this nation.

More courage on the right is necessary and long overdue.

THUGS.

That is how I have thought of them for years.

And that is exactly what they are.

Nice to see more of the country starting
to catch up on this obvious, but shocking fact.

Rayne, are you thinking of the four-letter troll at TNH also?

P.S. I knew a surgical orderly who loved his job because of the conversations he’d have with his drugged-up patients. Made money off of stock tips, too!