Zell Miller Syndrome

There must be something in the water in Georgia. First Zell Miller goes batshit, the President throws a collar on him and parades him around on stage, then he disappears. Truthfully, I really did think Zell had some kind of neurological problem, the change was so drastic and sudden.

But now, former congressman Bob Barr has it as well! Bob is the meanest, reddest republican who ever came from Georgia. He loves the War on Drugs, the FMA and was the leading congressman in the impeachment of Clinton. When asked why he and fellow republicans was pushing so hard for investigation after investigation until they found something , anything which would allow impeachment he notably responded, "because we can". He went as far as having Clinton's cat investigated.

But now, out of congress, Barr has changed his tune significantly. Once an author of the PATRIOT ACT, he is now one of it's most vocal critics, calling for scrapping it. He's joined the dreaded American Civil Liberties Union, the garlic and wooden spike of big daddy government. Very strange. Now this:

Two of the most powerful moments of political déjà vu I have ever experienced took place recently in the context of the Bush administration's defense of presidentially ordered electronic spying on American citizens.
First, in the best tradition of former President Bill Clinton's classic, "it-all-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-is-is" defense, President Bush responded to a question at a White House news conference about what now appears to be a clear violation of federal electronic monitoring laws by trying to argue that he had not ordered the National Security Agency to "monitor" phone and e-mail communications of American citizens without court order; he had merely ordered them to "detect" improper communications.

This example of presidential phrase parsing was followed quickly by the president's press secretary, Scott McLellan, dead-panning to reporters that when Bush said a couple of years ago that he would never allow the NSA to monitor Americans without a court order, what he really meant was something different than what he actually said. If McLellan's last name had been McCurry, and the topic an illicit relationship with a White House intern rather than illegal spying on American citizens, I could have easily been listening to a White House news conference at the height of the Clinton impeachment scandal.


Weird. Not quite a call for impeachment, but definately a clearer eyed evaluation than I would expect from someone with Barr's background.