I read today where Bush became the Fashion Critic-In-Chief at a Rose Garden press conference. Just because you pay attention to fashion doesn’t mean you play for the proverbial other team (and as the saying goes, not that there’s anything wrong with that). Added with other things, though, it makes one wonder.

What if the reason Republican leaders dismissed Mark Foley’s shocking behavior was because far bigger fish have bigger secrets? What if … Bush is gay? Its been the topic of humor sites for a while now. What if there’s really something to this?

Take Jeff Gannon for instance. This guy had unprecedented access to the White House at all hours. It was obvious by his innane, softball questioning that the gay-prostitute-turned-journalist didn’t get his press credentials by being a good reporter. So why was he there? Who gave free access to the White House to a male hooker with no journalistic experience? There always seemed to be a bigger story here that never got covered.

Jack Abramoff, the scandal-ridden former lobbyist, was said to have organized parties for politicians which included both male and female prostitutes. Ex-congressman and current federal PMITA prison inmate Randy “Duke” Cunningham was the most visible fall guy in the Abramoff scandal. Who else was there?

What if this comes a little too naturally for Bush?

Bush was a male cheerleeder at his all-male prep school. His college roommate was another male cheerleader, Victor Ashe, who became mayor of Knoxville and currently serves as Ambassador to Poland. Ashe is rumored to be gay. Ashe has allegedly visited the White House and Bush’s ranch in Crawford many times. Bush reportedly made many unscheduled visits to Ashe in Knoxville before Ashe was named ambassador. Just good friends, or something more? Author Kitty Kelly, while being no bastion of truth, has written about this seemingly special relationship in her biography of the Bush family.

His mother, Barbara Bush, was said to have told a fellow partygoer that her son is “not like the rest of us.” What if she was referring to more than just his noted lack of intellectual curiosity?

What if that story of Laura Bush taking up in the Mayflower Hotel are true?

I’ve got no problem with it if Bush is gay. I do have a problem with him hypocritically pushing an anti-gay agenda if he himself is gay. There is no smoking gun (heh) evidence that he is gay, but on the other hand I don’t see much that rules it out. It does make you wonder.

Mr. zman himself, Scott Zekanis, is hosting a screening of Iraq For Sale at his kewl klub called Kulture on October 15th at 7PM. The movie is an expose of the corporations making a killing from the war in Iraq, while soldiers and Iraqi civilians pay with their lives and body parts. Seems kinda wrong, doesn’t it?

Kulture is located at 430 S. Dawson St in downtown Raleigh. Price is free. Come along and find out the scoop about the war profiteers. Then don’t forget to vote next month!

I vividly remember my visit to Pusan, South Korea in 1989. It was one of the first foreign ports in my Navy career. The icy cold wind blowing from the mountains seemed the perfect companion to the very real tension in the air. Everywhere I went there was this ominous feeling that even after fifty years of uneasy truce, Korea was still on the front lines.

I’m a little dubious of North Korea’s claim of conducting its first nuke test, but not because I think its not true. I simply don’t think its their first. Back in the early 1990s, a small-scale nuclear test was conducted in China. Though China claimed it was their own, I’ve always wondered if North Korea tested their own device in China to avoid arousing suspicion.

And knowing what I know about international diplomacy, I don’t buy for a moment all the official “condemnations” from various nations. Countries routinely say one thing while doing another. Certainly some of them, perhaps China especially, have benefitted from feeding Kim Jong Il’s obsession with nuclear weapons. North Korea’s need for oil will make it only a matter of time before Iran has their own nukes. Or at least nukes from North Korea.

No one has any easy answers for North Korea. Its a problem left unsolved. Now that nukes are in the mix that problem has just gotten far more difficult.

North Carolina District 10 asshat Patrick McHenry has decided that House Democrats are to blame for Republican ex-Congressman Mark Foley’s interest in young studs. In a tired political stunt, McHenry yesterday called on House Democrats to testify under oath about what they knew about Foley. Never mind that the GOP leadership apparently was alerted several times and did nothing. Now its somehow Nancy Pelosi’s fault.

Enjoy your last days in Congress, Pat. In a little over a month, you’ll be free to take that dream job delivering pizzas in Cherryville.

Wow, could the timing of the Mark Foley scandal be any more perfect? I mean, while the news media is falling over themselves to cover yet another Washington sex scandal, no one will notice that the Republicans’ Detainee Bill has gutted habeas corpus. This little bill sets the American legal system back, oh 800 years or so.

So while we know all about Foley’s attraction to little boys, we hear little about our Republic crumbling around us. Our Dear Leader now has the right to lock up anyone he so chooses, indefinitely, with absolutely no legal recourse available to the victim. Isn’t that a little scarier?

What happened to the America I once knew? How is it that the freedoms we used to enjoy – those earned through two hundred thirty years of standing up to injustice – can be so easily dismissed, with not so much as a whimper from the populace? How is it the country I was proud to represent when I wore the uniform is so easily defeated – from the inside? America has turned into the Cold War foes it once faced down. Freedom vanishes with a stroke of a pen.

Every one of the cowards in Congress who allowed this to happen deserves to be handed walking papers next month. And if the door hits them on the way out, all the better. Its well past time to get this country back on track.

I was thinking back to the devastation that Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans last year. It reminded me of how utterly pathetic the current administration’s response was, as well as how it played on racial overtones. Then I remembered that my congressional representative is running for reelection against another wingnut playing the discrimination card. So, I made a contribution to Brad Miller’s campaign.

I hope you will, too.

Today’s Washington Post notices today what I noticed last week: Osama Bin Laden isn’t wanted by the FBI for the attacks of 9/11. Nowhere on his most wanted poster does it mention the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon or the World Trade Center.

The article says its because Bin Laden’s never been charged with the attacks. In a way I’m glad to see the FBI is going by the book on this one, and only listing crimes for which a suspect has been indicted.

Rule of law. What an amazing concept. If only the rest of the gummint held this standard.

A New York satellite TV dealer named Javed Iqbal was recently arrested simply for providing access (no, actually for agreeing to provide access) to a certain satellite channel. You won’t see Disney cartoons on this particular channel, as its al-Manar, a channel that acts as the propaganda arm of Hizbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group. (Read USA Today’s recent profile of Al-Manar).

Now I don’t happen to agree with Al-Manar’s message. After all, for hatred and one-sided, venom-spewing propaganda there’s always Fox News. But aside from all that, it is a clear violation of the First Amendment to make listening to an opposing viewpoint a crime. That’s just what the Department of Treasury did in December 2004 when it branded the television channel “a terrorist entity” and made all financial transactions between Al-Manar and Americans unlawful.

How a video signal can be considered dangerous is beyond me. Guns, yes. Bombs, yes. But not a TV signal. As far as I know, no one’s ever died from watching TV.

Blocking broadcasts is something cold-war Soviets did. It’s what Castro’s Cuba does. You expect it from totalitarian governments. It’s not something a supposedly free country – one which supposedly values freedom of speech – engages in. Even the oppressive, Islamic government of Iran can’t stop the spread of thousands of satellite dishes on homes across the country.

Is Hizbollah a terrorist organization? Undoubted and unabashedly. Is Al-Manar being used to further their terrorist goals? Perhaps. But freedom of speech is freedom of speech. You either accept that every idea has a right to be expressed – whether you agree or disagree – or you don’t. If you restrict speech – ANY speech – it isn’t free anymore.

I hope this New York guy’s case to court and he wins. And then he sues the pants off the Treasury Department. A government that can tell us what we can and can’t watch and whom we can and can’t believe poses a bigger threat to our freedom than any terrorist.

I’ve never liked Joe Lieberman. He’s needed a good smacking for a while now (and no, not the George W. Bush kind of smack).

Last night Ned Lamont did the real smacking. Here’s hoping its the end of Holy Joe’s political career.