Like many charlatans, neo-conservatives play games with certainty. Taking lessons from creationists and postmodernists, this administration and its mainstream pundit enablers demand absolute certainty where they want to drag their feet (global warming, election fraud), exaggerate the threat of uncertainty when they want to act (Iraq, Iran, confiscating water bottles from thirsty travelers), and protest their innocence when they fail to act on eminently predictable but not fully, 100% certain outcomes (9/11, Iraq insurgency, New Orleans, Tora Bora).
Now they’re trying to learn from physics as well. The Office of the Vice President is attempting to apply Heisenberg uncertainty to constitutional law. We can know what power Cheney is abusing, or we can know which branch of government he belongs to, but we cannot know both at the same time. Since stopping his malfeasance is one of those cases where the pundits will require unreasonable levels of certainty, there will be no way to pin him down in a given place doing a given thing at the same time. This video has Dana Perino playing the hapless TA attempting to explain Constitutional uncertainty. “It’s more complex than that … it’s not as simple as that … I’ll ask the prof to clarify … it’s simpler than that … you’ve got me thoroughly confused.”
To highlight the hilarity that ensues when a megalomaniac gets into a position of unchecked and unaccountable power, new blogger Peace Pundit asks an important question. After soberly recounting civilian deaths in Iraq that were all justified by the military as collateral damage for taking out insurgents who were “hiding” in civilian neighborhoods, he asks:
So, in this shooting accident, in which Mr. Whittington was “collateral damage”, we need to know: Did Cheney at least kill the quail?
- jack*
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