The unicider

So, George Bush, great supporter of the troops, just gave a recess appointment to a jackass who gave 50,000 to a group dedicated to slandering a purple heart winner. The contempt this signals to Congress, to the military, to the American voters, and the...Belges... is just reeks to high heaven. And here's the other characters he appointed yesterday who didn't have a chance in hell to get past the Senate.

In addition to Fox, Bush, as long expected, gave a recess appointment to Susan E. Dudley, who had headed the anti-regulatory Mercatus Center at George Mason University, to oversee federal regulatory policy at the Office of Management and Budget. . . .

"Bush issued a third recess appointment to Andrew Biggs, assistant director of the Project on Social Security Choice at the libertarian Cato Institute and an advocate of privatizing Social Security, to be deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration. That drew an angry rebuke from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who said that 'prospects for getting real Social Security reform anytime soon just took a big hit with this recess appointment.' Baucus added: 'This administration is clearly not serious about leaving behind the failed schemes of the past.'"

Biggs was a frequent companion for Bush during his failed Social Security barnstorming tour in 2005.

Joel Havemann writes in the Los Angeles Times: "President Bush on Wednesday appointed as his top regulatory official a conservative academic who has written that markets do a better job of regulating than the government does and that it is more cost-effective for people who are sensitive to pollution to stay indoors on smoggy days than for government to order polluters to clean up their emissions.

"As director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget, Susan E. Dudley will have an opportunity to change or block all regulations proposed by government agencies. . . .

"Bush has used recess appointments more than 100 times, often to get around a recalcitrant Senate. In perhaps his most controversial such appointment, he named John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations in 2005. Bolton served until late last year, when the 109th Congress adjourned and he was constitutionally required to step down.

"Although Dudley's new job is more obscure than those to which Biggs and Fox were appointed, it also is potentially the most powerful. The budget office's regulatory shop acts as a funnel for all regulations emanating throughout the government."

During the 2000 election Al Gore made the argument repeatedly that voters weren't just electing a president, or even a Cabinet, or even the Supreme Court, but an entire government, including the judges and the bureaucrats who are all but invisible but wield incredibly power. The press ignored this, preferring the spreads the Bush campaign laid out over the Gore campaign's "meager" offerings and preferring as well, the Bush campaign's narrative that Gore was just a big ol' fibber.

But who could have guessed that Rove's dick would rule with more disdain for democracy, good government, and responsibility than Caligula. I'm surprised he hasn't named a horse to head a key agency. Oh, right.