Because we can all use a bit of laughter after this week…

• Colbert on the Pottery Barn Rule: “Do you know what happens if you break a lamp at Pottery Barn and leave? Genocide!”
• Colbert:
  

  According to the Washington Post, the President is seeking candidates for a brand-new position they’re calling the war czar. The czar would coordinate between State and Defense Departments; oversee operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; and, one assumes, keep an eye on Rasputin….If only the Constitution provided for some kind of—chief commander, or commanderish chief, who could command chiefly these wars!

• Glad our Attorney General was able to articulate a clear explanation of how his department operates.

• Abstinence-only education doesn’t work.
• Interracial marriages are on the rise. It’s been 40 years since the Supreme Court invalidated miscegenation laws in the landmark decision of Loving v. Virginia, calling the freedom to marry “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”
• DailyKos links to this interview:
  

  Q: You began in the Justice Department during the Watergate years. How would you rank Alberto Gonzales in terms of politicization of the department in comparison to the other AGs you have worked for?

  A: …[I worked in the Department for over 30 years under] more than a dozen attorneys general, including Ed Meese as well as John Mitchell, and I used to think that they had politicized the department more than anyone could or should. But nothing compares to the past two years under Alberto Gonzales.

So Karl Rove and other political appointees in the White House used their RNC email accounts (rather than their government accounts) to discuss the possibility of firing U.S. Attorneys, and now the administration tells us that these emails…wait for it…have mysteriously disappeared! What a shame, because the White House no doubt would have loved to be able to produce these emails to prove they weren’t attempting to interfere with the Justice Department for political reasons. But Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) isn’t buying it:

“They say they have not been preserved. I don’t believe that!” Leahy shouted from the Senate floor.

Is Leahy right to believe that the administration is lying, or did the RNC simply put IT wizard Sen. Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens in charge of their servers? If so, Leahy has a solution for retrieving the messages:

“I’ve got a teenage kid in my neighborhood that can go get ’em for them,” he told reporters later.

Jon Stewart:

As…members of Gonzales’s own party are questioning his credibility, it’s once again left to the White House to defend Gonzales with a sentence that appears to actually be eating itself:

“He doesn’t recall having recollections about having deliberative discussions.” (Deputy White House Press Secretary Dana Perino)

That was a sentence so tortured, even the man who declared the Geneva Convention quaint wouldn’t allow it to be used on prisoners.

Also, you may recall jupi’s post about the New York City ban of the n-word. The recent Daily Show investigative report on this issue (by Larry Wilmore and John Oliver) is priceless.

This is soooo my favorite news story of the week:

Disney is now allowing gay couples to hold commitment ceremonies in the magic kingdom. In this article, a reverand attributes the decision to financial reasons, given that Disney can make an additional $1.5 million per year with a mere 1 commitment ceremony per week. (The average package goes for $28,000.) I don’t really buy that argument, because it would save Disney a lot of problems if it just left the issue alone. What do you think?

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• This is pretty funny.

• “Good news for the Bush administration. Just one week after the outrageous Walter Reed medical scandal, that story is gone. Because there’s a new kid in town. His name is Outrageous Fired Federal Prosecutors Attorney General Scandal. Yes, in one week it’s been revealed the administration screwed over wounded vets (the most revered people in America), and lawyers (the most reviled people in America), proving they’ve got range.”
  —Jon Stewart (via DailyKos)

Just when it seems like the Bush Administration can’t take another hit, a scandal erupts. It seems like no laws were broken, which begs the question, is there a problem?

Q: Where would you find Christian fundamentalists supporting a student who, at a school event, displayed a sign that said “Bong Hits 4 Jesus”?

A: At the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Last night, in a lecture entitled “Religion and Freedom of Speech: Cartoons and Controversies,” Yale law professor David Boies provided insightful analysis of the tensions between freedom of speech and the regulation of offensive material.

Post focused on the recent controversy over twelve editorial cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Rather than arguing whether the Danish paper was correct in publishing them, he discussed what the legal repercusions should have been, in relation to both European and American law, and how this issue is representative of a very basic tension existing in all democracies.

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• Al Gore and the Oscars:

Colbert counters that Gore is not green.

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