Nothing Aside

Doing It The Hard Way

Today Kevin Drum raises a good point about this NSA-wiretapping-ignoring-Congress story.  The reason so many Democrats and a good number of reasonable Republicans are upset about this is not the program itself.  Yes, the public is extremely nervous about the word "wiretapping" but that's not totally what this is about because that's not the best term for it.  The program itself is filling a gap where a gap needed to be filled as far as I can tell.  Ultimately, the problem here then, is that the President didn't attempt to get the law changed by what was a pliable Congress in the days and months after 9-11 so that this program would be legal and legitimate.  Instead he dodged Congress.  That is the real story here.

Politically, I think Democrats should make it absolutely clear that what they're attacking isn't necessarily the program itself, but the fact that the president unilaterally decided that he could approve the program without congressional authorization. In the world of 10-second sound bites, that might end up being a difficult distinction to make, but it's worth making it over and over anyway. We're not opposed to cranking up our intelligence efforts, but we are opposed to a president who thinks that a vague and indefinite state of war gives him the authority to do anything he wants.

I hope this distinction can be made.  The White House would like nothing better than to make this another "Democrats are weak on defense and security" story, but it's not about that.  It's about the Bush administration purposely sidestepping Congress in an effort to exert presidential powers that only it believes it has.  There was an easy way to get approval for this program.  The White House instead chose to bull rush Congress in a push for imperial powers in an unending war.

Ignoring Congress

What is happening to our Constitution?  There is clearly a massive fight over power between the branches of government that seemingly only the executive branch is aware of and actively engaged in. Congress needs to stand up for its Constitutionally-mandated role and ensure that the laws that it passes, and the president signs, are actually carried out.  On Friday the President signed the Defense Appropriations Bill that includes the so-called McCain Amendment that reiterates the standards for interrogation that are already in the rules of conduct in the Army field manual.  The White House, and specifically the Vice President's office, have fought this simple declaration of America's rules on interrogation practices as an encroachment on the President's duties to defend America and other grrr!, roar!, patriotic macho stuff.

However, after the Senate voted 90-9, the writing was on the wall and the White House had to back down.  It seemed that McCain had prevailed, what with a huge majority of the public backing his view that torture is wrong and should not be used in interrogations.

But take a look at what the President wrote when he signed the Defense Appropriations Bill on Friday.

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

Essentially the President is saying that the McCain Amendment isn't worth the paper it is written on since he plans to ignore it anyway.  He will cite his wartime powers and say that the rules do not apply since he is just acting within his authority to protect Americans.  Anyone who stands in his way is weak and doesn't care about the security of our nation.

But when does the war end?  The answer, of course, is that it doesn't.  The war against terrorism is one without any endpoint. We don’t live in a time when war is openly declared and when peace treaties signal the end of hostilities. That will never happen again and the President knows it.  As such he is confident that he can use his war powers indefinitely, thereby ignoring the stipulations of the McCain Amendment.

So what will McCain's response be to the President's boldfaced dismissal of Congress' wishes?  We will have to wait and see on that one.  But I think Congress needs to recognize how much it is getting hosed here.  I'm not a huge fan of the petty, mind-numbing nonsense that goes on in the House of Representatives, but it serves a purpose.  One of its duties is to balance the power of the Executive.  It is time for Congress, and the Judiciary while we're at it, to do their job and look at where we are headed.  It's not a pretty picture.

Liberty Neglected

One of the most fundamental issues in our republic is at the fore of our national political discussion right now: the protection of civil liberties.  We are seeing the issue arise on a number of fronts.  With the news of the NSA wiretaps authorized by the Bush administration based on its own interpretation of executive authority we saw the issue jump to the front pages.

Today there is this AP story about a memo that Judge Sam Alito wrote in 1984 when he worked in the Reagan Justice Department.  It is troubling on a few levels.  First there is the fact that Alito argues that the Attorney General deserves "absolute immunity" for anything he does to ensure national security.  Absolute immunity.  If there were ever a jurist with more blind deference to executive authority, Alito would be hard pressed to top him or her.  With civil liberties being chipped away every day (as the PATRIOT Act is reauthorized in the coming weeks), a judge with such total deference to the power of the president is exactly the wrong person for the job. 

Social conservatives in the Republican base should realize what President Bush is really after.  Alito isn't the nominee that is out to overturn Roe vs. Wade and signal a sharp turn towards social conservatism.  Rather, Alito is just like Roberts as far as his believe in unfettered executive power.  Bush is out to mold a Court that will bow to his every grave pronouncement of the "threat" we face.  Whatever that threat is, of course, depends on the day.  Meanwhile our civil liberties shrink, wither and are smothered.

And don't count on Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to stand up for civil liberties as Republicans in the past used to.  Here is Sen. John Cornyn of Texas giving the clearest summation of today's Republican Party I've heard in a while:

None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead.

That statement has everything you need to know about the priorities of the Republican party:  fear-mongering and an utter disrespect for the most basic of civil liberties that define our nation. 

A few of our founding fathers might have a thing or two to say about Cornyn's declaration:

They who would give up an essential liberty to obtain temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.

That's Ben Franklin, of course.  And let's not forget Patrick Henry:

Give me liberty or give me death.

If we forget what made our country great in the first place, what is left?  Certainly our security is of great importance, but if we're secure and have nothing left that originally defined our country as a beacon of liberty, we will have lost.

Liberty And Security Out Of Balance

It's been a bit too long since I last posted and a lot has happened in the meantime.  Most notably, this business with the NSA spying on calls by U.S. citizens without warrants.  I haven't had time to really read all about the issue, but even if I did much of this would be beyond my expertise.  On the surface of it all though, it seems very troubling.

I'm not an expert on FISA or on the full legal history of executive power, but this seems like an overstep.  What's more, the White House seems almost excited about the possibility of picking this fight on what seems like one of the most important issues in our country: the trade-off between security and liberty. 

What the Bush administration has shown over the past five years however, is nothing that would let me think that this is harmless.  This is an administration that has sought executive power without end and in the wake of 9/11 has had that authority unchecked and unchallenged.  It seems only inevitable that some of that hubris would backfire and would ultimately prove to be beyond basic standards of reasonableness. 

It seems that these extra-judicial, post-facto warrants (or even total lack of warrants) fall into this category of the Bush administration declaring itself king and seeing what it can get away with.  This is a fundamental affront to our freedoms as American citizens and to our basic liberties.

Some have argued that there is nothing wrong with these (illegal) searches because they target such and such terrorist or more infamously on Fox News and other conservative talking shops, "a guy whose phone number is in Zarqawi's cell phone".  Any student of the law, or any citizen who has ever taken an interest in the rule of law that governs American society knows this to be a faulty argument from the very beginning.  To argue "I'm OK with the government potentially spying on innocent people because they have nothing to hide" is the first, second and third step towards fascism.  If we are to live up to the ideals that support American patriotism the rule of law must be maintained and civil liberties must not be surrendered.

Another argument in support of the FISA-less wire taps suggests our new threat from terrorism requires new powers for the president and if the legislature can't keep up in responding to the looming, never-ending threat, then the president is free to do just about anything he wants in the arena of foreign policy.  This is nonsense.  When is "war time"?  What is war these days?  When will this war ever end?  The answers are not clear and the Bush administration has taken that as an invitation to gobble up as much of the constitution as possible. 

Meanwhile the president and his spokesman are insisting that these powers to make dubious wire taps were authorized by, of all things, the authorization to go to war with Iraq.  Considering that these wire taps were happening well before that vote occurred, this is a blatantly flawed argument.  But then again, that hasn't stopped this administration before.

I don't know.  There is clearly a lot we don't know about here and probably a lot that has not come out yet.  The radical Hamiltonians in the White House right now seem to have forgotten Ben Franklin's famous quip:

Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

It seems those in the White House who are defending this abuse of basic constitutional rights have forgotten how quickly our liberty can disappear in the face of overzealous "defenders of security".  For too long the White House has suggested that those who oppose its version of necessary security are weak on protecting America.  They forget, or perhaps refuse to see, that protecting America means protecting our basic civil liberties first and foremost.

Making Sense Of Preemptive War

Be sure to get your hands on the Winter issue of The American Interest.  There is a great article by Ivo Daalder and James Steinberg about the use, and misuse, of preemptive warfare, the unchartered territory upon which we now view much of our foreign policy. It has been a while since I have seen a piece that argues so succinctly on an important national security issue like this.  It sets out why such a concept shouldn't be seen as overly aggressive in all circumstances since it has some very logical and practical applications.  Daalder and Steinberg's argument, that preemption is only a risky policy when it is used as sparingly and infrequently as it is today, is one that I was not expecting.  But it is nevertheless convincing.  Check it out.

The Nuge Chimes In

However unintentional, it seems to be Kenyon Week here at Nothing Aside.  This time the contributor is none other than Kenyon's president, S. Georgia Nugent (affectionately known as "The Nuge" or "G. Nugget" by students).  Writing as part of a series on colleges for Slate, Nugent takes up the issue of moral and ethical development as an important part of one's complete education.  Perhaps she has been spending a bit of time in Horowitz House with our esteemed Political Science faculty?

But what of the emphasis on moral development? On the same national survey of faculty, only 69 percent identified "developing moral character" as the most important aspect of a college education, and only 39 percent chose "enhancing spiritual development." When I have asked my faculty colleagues their views, they say they are too "modest" to assert the ability to develop moral character and too wary, in today's political climate, to meddle in students' spiritual development. Perhaps it's time for me and my fellow presidents to draft the syllabus for that capstone course in metaphysics with which the presidents used to send their graduates off into the world.

What would be the syllabus for such a course? My response—not at all flippant—would be: It doesn't matter. What I'm talking about is not a required reading list; rather it is an experience of understanding and growth that might take a myriad of forms. The goal is not mastery of a subject but maturity as an adult—attaining a degree of self-understanding, an appreciation for the limits of the human condition, empathy for others, and a sense of responsibility for civil society. For me, as a classicist, the syllabus would probably focus on the Homeric epics and Greek tragedy. These texts have, to my mind, almost unparalleled power to anchor us in the world and confront us with both our wrenching limitations and our soaring possibilities as human beings. But for another colleague, the entire syllabus would be Melville's Moby Dick; for another, such a course would consist of teaching his students to construct a scientific instrument by hand; for a fourth, the course might be organic chemistry taught inductively through group discussion. What matters is not the subject but the sensibility. In fact, each of these hypothetical courses is one I have known a fine faculty member to teach, in a way that offered not information "to pass the exam" but the wisdom of a life-changing experience.

Kenyon's emphasis on the roots of the liberal arts education are, I think, stronger than most schools like it.  For the best example of what Kenyon is all about though, I must refer back to the speech given by David Foster Wallace at my commencement last May.

Now that I am out of Kenyon, I really see how unique the liberal arts education is and how far it can take students.  Too often here in Washington I find myself surrounded by overly-ambitious students (often from George Washington University, though the others are no less guilty) who don't know the first thing about political philosophy, the roots of our socio-political motivations or our responsibility to civic virtue.  Since their first day of college they have been studying "Eastern European Security Issues", "Weapons Proliferation in Latin America" or some other equally admirable yet obscure and precise topic.  All of these classes and subjects are of great interest, but without the theory behind the practice, what good is it all?  If you don't know what Rousseau is blabbering on about, or don't comprehend why Aristotle would bother with a few words on political ethics, each real world crisis of our present day will be an unnerving surprise.  If we have the right "sensibility" and the right degree of "self-understanding", as Nugent says, we'll be prepared to face what comes next with confidence and control.  That is what a true education is all about.

The Dialogue Of Ideas

In my previous post I wrote about Ahmed Chalabi's speech at the American Enterprise Institute.  Chalabi offered up some rather maddening dodges to legitimate questions from seasoned reporters such as this response to a question about his role in supporting the idea that Iraq had stockpiles of WMD:

"It is not useful for me to comment on this.  That is in the past."

This type of answer is totally inadequate, especially considering the ramifications of Chalabi's distortions and exaggerations in the run-up to the war.  He should not be allowed to get away with answers like this because they are woefully irresponsible.  Ends justify the means for Chalabi and no one bothers to push him on why that is?  Something is wrong there.

Surely the gall of Chalabi would offend those who heard him.  He might be a bright man, but he is also a very cagey man.  As I watched him during the Q&A period, it was hard not to notice that he was relishing each moment when he was challenged on something he had no justification for.  The bigger the lie he had to defend, the more cocky he appeared.  Perhaps this is something he picked up from his Bush administration allies, or maybe they picked it up from him.  Either way, very troubling.

Chalabi is a smart guy.  He wouldn't be where he is today without having a skill or two.  As Christopher Hitchens suggested, Iraq needs people like Chalabi.  Hitchens has much more respect for and confidence in Chalabi than I do (mine is near zero), but that doesn't mean that I respect Hitchens any less.  He too is a smart man – someone who enjoys being intellectually provocative with the goal of riling up some thought.  Is that really such a bad thing? 

The ability to disagree on principled issues is one of the hallmarks of a successful political dialogue.  Without open debate where would we be?  Challenging ideas and hypothetical musings are what make great debate memorable even if they do not lead to substantive form.  What they do is make us think.

Hitchens is a known provocateur.  He pushes rhetoric to the limit to support his point.  I sometimes find it to be a bit much, but it always gets me thinking.  Why is Hitchens so unequivocal about calling the terrorists we face "fascists"?  On the surface the comparison seems a bit strong and may even diminish the original horrible fascism of Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy.  But while I am thinking about how Hitchens may over-use the term, I think about the comparisons and I begin to see why he sees the threat in this way.  And if he has made me think about the connection, he has already accomplished something real.

Civil debate should be more like this more often.  Maybe Hitchens wasn't suggesting that Chalabi literally was busy at work breaking American codes (in fact, I'm almost certain he was not), but rather he was emphasizing to me that Chalabi is a smart man with a strong background in mathematics.  The fact that Chalabi's current troubles relate to codes and mathematics then seems rather ironic.  For a man like Hitchens, who is always on the lookout for a way to advance provocative thought and discourse, a connection, however specious, between Chalabi's academic training and his current indiscretions with the Iranians was perhaps too difficult to pass up.  I didn't take this suggestion very seriously, and I don't think he did either, but it did inform me of Chalabi's background and his capabilities.  And that, no doubt, was the point.  Score one for Hitchens.

Political dialogue should be provocative in this way.  Sure, every idea isn't worth seeing to fruition and some are little more than teasers, but in that process new ideas can form which may then spur even more ideas.  If I disagree with Hitchens on some points about his support for the war, that shouldn't prevent me from being open to his arguments.  Likewise, I may not agree completely with the arguments about Chalabi offered by my friend at The American Interest who writes for their blog, Cont'd, but I nevertheless linked to his account so that a debate about Chalabi could be seen from a number of angles.

That is what is important: seeing every variety and angle of truth that can be seen so that our political dialogues have purpose, meaning and direction.  Provocative thought does this, and opposing views offer a counterpunch to the unconscious acceptance of Our Truth.  We should be open to ideas that push the envelope, for even a faulty idea offers clarity to successful notions.  This, as I see it, is what we are after.

Chalabi in DC

I've just returned from a circus-like appearance by Ahmed Chalabi at the American Enterprise Institute.  This was Chalabi's first visit to the U.S. in two and a half years and the first since he has been accused of passing American codes to the government of Iran, and since his home was raided by American forces a year ago.  Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress pushed faulty and false intelligence on the Bush administration prior to the war, which Cheney and his cohorts readily ate up.  This speech was his first moment of potential accountability since the war began.

The audience for the speech was a star cast of top Washington reporters and thinkers: David Corn of The Nation, Matt Yglesias of The American Prospect, Reuel Marc Gerecht of AEI, David Schuster of MSNBC's Hardball, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, Michael Barone of US News & World Report, Fouad Ajami of SAIS, David Frum of The National Review, Robin Wright of The Washington Post, and Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair and Slate.  And those were just the people I recognized off-hand.

The room of about 80 people was packed.  When Chalabi finally took the podium, he looked incredibly nervous and hesitant.  I guess I would be as well if I was being investigated (however anemically) by the FBI into the passing of American codes to the Iranians and being harassed by reporters wanting to know why his claims of WMD in Iraq turned out to be so wrong.

Here are a few choice quotes from Chalabi.  I wasn't actively taking notes, but a few things jumped out as particularly noteworthy, shocking, absurd or some combination therein.

• "Most of the Ba'ath Party was Shia."  Huh?  I'm not sure where he's getting this from, but I'm pretty sure that it is blatantly not true. 
• "The fact that I misled the U.S. is an urban myth."  Well, he has certainly picked up on the Bush administration's favored tactic when faced with overwhelming evidence of wrong-doing: deny and summarily dismiss the argument out-of-hand.  Period.  It will go away!
• "I did not pass sensitive information to Iran."  This may not be a surprising quotation, but perhaps you had to be there to see how he was saying this.  I don't think I've ever seen anyone more uncomfortable in my life.  The fact that he was speaking a lie was all over his face.
• "I would go to the Senate and answer questions."  Well, he has offered.  Now where are the senators on the intelligence committee calling for a hearing?  Anyone?
• "I have a multi-dimensional relationship with the Bush administration."  There's a euphemism if I ever heard one.  Chalabi went from the administration's best friend to the top of its black list and now back to its uncomfortable friend all within three years.  Multi-dimensional is a good word for it, to say the least.
• "It is not useful for me to comment on this.  That is in the past."  This is what Chalabi said when asked about how he pushed fraudulent and faulty intelligence about Saddam's WMD's.  Stunning.  The means justify the ends to him, even if the American public is paying the cost of those ends.  His only goal was to overthrow Saddam.  If that meant pimping false evidence so the United States would be persuaded into war, so be it.  So what if 2,000 American soldiers are now dead - he's deputy prime minister now.
• I don't have an exact quote for this one, but Chalabi also suggested that the U.S. needn't really ever leave Iraq.  They should just pull back to a few bases eventually.  Why should the U.S. stay and keep bases in Iraq?  To protect Iraq from its neighbors.  Not to keep Iraq from descending into civil war, but to keep Iraq free from interference from its threatening neighbors.  The man really does think that the U.S. military is his own play thing.
• Chalabi also spoke about Iraqi oil.  For a while.  This portion, quite appropriately, was when he seemed to lighten up and he developed a somewhat evil smile as he spoke about the possibilities for Iraqi oil.  It may sound typically leftist of me, but he seriously began to get an animated look in his eye suggesting that the topic of Iraqi oil was where his real interest lay.  Spooky.

The cast of characters who attended the speech, other than reporters and notable intellectuals, was interesting.  I spotted people from a variety of sketchy-sounding energy and consulting companies.  Just to name a few: C & O Resources, ExxonMobil, Orion Strategies, Aries Group and Goodwin Procter LLP.  Mind you, I don't know what these or some of the other companies and organizations do, but I was sufficiently suspicious of their presence at the Chalabi speech.

After the speech I followed the throng out of the room and was able to get a few good pictures of Chalabi as he left.  In the elevator lobby I met Matt Yglesias, whose various blogs I read on a regular basis.  He seemed equally amazed by Chalabi's gall.  Here is his take on Chalabi's dismissal of any wrong-doing.  I hadn't read the "page 108" Chalabi was referring to, but Matt has and points it out.  As Matt says, it certainly is a curious way to exonerate oneself.

After pausing to see who else I recognized, I took an elevator down with Christopher Hitchens and David Corn, among other people.  Talk about a recipe for conflict.  Hitchens used to write for The Nation until his pro-war position became untenable and he left in disgust.  Corn is still there and is The Nation's marquee reporter.  Awkward!  The two of them almost immediately started going at it over the CIA leak case.  I didn't catch the whole thing, but watching the two of them go at it was priceless.  Their argument continued outside for about five minutes while Hitchens lit up a smoke, and Corn got apoplectic about the absurdity of the Bush administration's claims about the war.  It was incredible theater. 

After a few minutes I introduced myself to Hitchens and took the opportunity to ask him about his March 2005 piece in Vanity Fair where he looked into the incredible voter irregularities in Ohio, where I voted while at Kenyon College.  I asked him if he thought that the election could have gone the other way had these irregularities not existed and he scoffed at the suggestion.  "It wouldn't have been in the Democrats' interests to pursue an investigation into the irregularities.  Just like with Nixon in Illinois [in 1960], it was best for both sides not to bring it to the fore."  I still have my doubts.

Hitchens then turned the subject back to Chalabi, his good friend.  I asked him if he thought Chalabi had been passing American intelligence to the Iranians.  "No," he insisted.  "It's possible that with his training, you know, at [The University of] Chicago that with his own ability he was able to crack the codes.  He is a mathematical genius.  His expertise is cryptology.  It is possible that he broke the codes himself."  (This is a paraphrase since I was walking down M Street and crossing Connecticut Avenue all while being amazed that I was having an actual conversation with Christopher Hitchens at the time).  Now, I don't believe this for one second.  Why would Chalabi be trying to break American codes in his spare time anyway?  Who does that if they are friendly to us?  Suspicious, I say.

I noticed that Hitchens was without his Kurdish flag lapel pin.  He has been wearing it for years as a symbol of what is possible and as a sign of solidarity with the long oppressed Kurds of northern Iraq.  He said he had lost the pin and felt naked without it.  That is certainly no good.  At Connecticut Avenue we parted ways and I again mentioned that he should try to get back to Kenyon if he could get the chance.  We may disagree on Chalabi, but Hitchens is someone who I wouldn't mind spending some time listening to and arguing with.  Maybe some other time. 

Anyway, there is my close encounter with Ahmed Chalabi, the man who sold the Bush administration a war in Iraq.  Now I'm going to wash my hands.

**UPDATE**: If you're interested in more of the substance of the speech (which I skimmed for the most part), be sure to read this account by David Donadio at Cont'd, the new blog of The American Interest.  Donadio is also a Kenyon alum and is now the Deputy Managing Editor at The American Interest.

Hamilton Opposes Miers

Alexander Hamilton, that is.  Here is a particularly relevant section of The Federalist Papers #76 that every senator ought to re-read.  Hamilton is explaining the benefits and drawbacks of each of the three options for dealing with appointments.  Those options, as he sees them, are: let one man (the executive) make absolute appointments; assign the duty to a deliberative body (the Senate); or have the executive appoint a nominee for consideration by the Senate.  Hamilton and the Founding Fathers chose the last of these.  Here is why:

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.

It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature. The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other.

He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.

Of course Hamilton foresaw a stronger balance between the branches of government, not a balance between two parties (which had not yet materialized by 1788).  What we lack today is a Senate that sees itself as a check on the executive's less than qualified appointments.  Instead we see senators afraid to voice any opposition to Miers on the grounds of the obvious and blatant cronyism that earned her this nomination, and instead deciding if they should oppose her because she might not be as far to the right as they would have hoped.  There is something seriously wrong with this. 

Honest Democrats should oppose Miers because the country deserves better justices.  Republicans should do the same.  The first questions every senator should clear up before anything else are: "Is the nominee qualified to fulfill the responsibilities of the office?  Is this person the most qualified person for the position?"  If not, the ideology of the nominee shouldn't even be in play. 

It seems both sides have forgotten Hamilton's sage founding words.

Conservatism Needs A Diet

Perhaps you heard Tom Delay's recent comment that there simply is no more fat to cut from the federal budget.  You may have been as shocked as I am, especially after Congress passed the most pork-heavy transportation and energy bills in history.  Just for the record, here is what Delay declared:

WASHINGTON -- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.
    
    Mr. DeLay was defending Republicans' choice to borrow money and add to this year's expected $331 billion deficit to pay for Hurricane Katrina relief. Some Republicans have said Congress should make cuts in other areas, but Mr. DeLay said that doesn't seem possible.
...

Asked if that meant the government was running at peak efficiency, Mr. DeLay said, "Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we've pared it down pretty good."

The ridiculousness of this statement speaks for itself.  Anyone who has paid any attention at all to the federal government knows that the government is about as obese as your average American.

Here is what Andrew Sullivan had to say about it all:

This is what conservatism has now come to mean: the worst aspects of big government liberalism with the worst aspects of meddling in the moral decisions of people's private lives. And the people who have done this seem oblivious to it. I will remind you, Tom DeLay equated a balanced budget with fiscal sanity in the Clinton years. But now it's his budget, and his constituents and interest groups who get to feed at the trough, and the sky is the limit. A reminder to fiscal conservatives: today's GOP isn't just not what it used to be; it's your main enemy now. Conservatism has been hijacked by puritans and spendthrifts. Their unifying philosophy is meddling in other people's lives and spending other people's money.

Right on.  Real "conservatism" hasn't been a functional philosophy in the U.S. Government since the late 1990s.  It wasn't the philosophy I subscribed to, but at least it was consistant and honest.