Why do we call them wing-nuts?

Because this.

That's not "derangement syndrome," that's full-blown psychosis.

Obama ruins everything

'We should've just let Osama live in his stupid house.' — A. Pareene

Notice the wing-nuts don't call it "derangement syndrome" anymore, even though it's more appropriate than it ever was with G.W. Bush.

Bush Obama Derangement Syndrome

"Congress authorized the EPA to draft the rule 20 years ago, and the EPA published the order in 2008." Who was prez 20 years ago? Who was prez in 2008? Obama, that's who.

— DodgeCounty

Surreal Debate Wisconsin

In which at least one man's ability to successfully order a chronology of events is discombobulated by the Barack Derangement Syndrome:

Your Obama Justice Department is on the loose again. This time they are [sic] asking for all visitors from a news website (a left of center one at that).

The embedded link contains this misleading observation:

Under long-standing Justice Department guidelines, subpoenas to members of the news media are supposed to receive special treatment. One portion of the guidelines, for instance, says that "no subpoena may be issued to any member of the news media" without "the express authorization of the attorney general" — that would be current attorney general Eric Holder — and subpoenas should be "directed at material information regarding a limited subject matter."

All very fascinating, because the subpoena in question was issued on January 23, 2009.* Eric Holder didn't succeed to the position held by his Bush administration predecessors until February 3 and then on February 25 — Lo and Behold! — the subpoena was withdrawn.

* And in fact the subpoena was issued by a United States Attorney, Timothy M. Morrison, who was appointed to that position in April, 2008 by George W. Bush's Attorney General Michael Mukasey (that would be the guy who took the reins after Alberto "Selective Amnesia Syndrome" Gonzales was effectively drummed out of office).

Nut-right round-up (Tehran edition)

It was bad enough when Obama was just making statements on Iran, when he should have been leading the groovy counterrevolution in a nuclear chariot — but when he got some ice cream with his daughters, that's when all hell broke loose.

Roy Edroso (includes Wisconsin angle).

"Bush Derangement Syndrome" is a common cold by comparison.

Reports the Grauniad:

In spite of Obama's restrained comments so far, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, blamed the US, as well as Britain, for the crisis and called on them to end their interference.

Guess who this undermines inside Iran. Correct: Not Obama.

See, e.g., John S. McCain — "But I am the bombardier!"

The GOP's seven stages of Soto-grief

Funny stuff from the New York Daily News:

THE UPWARD TURN

Conservative critics predicted Sonia Sotomayor would face a grilling over a one-paragraph ruling she and two other judges on the Second Circuit issued last year.

I doubt much will come of that, as the United States Supreme Court will have decided that case's appeal by the time Judge Sotomayor sits down with the GOP "grillers" on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

She should have little or no problem explaining why she and her colleagues affirmed the decision of the district court below based on controlling precedent within the Second Circuit (and above).

If she's extra good at explaining, she may even educate John Cornyn and Tom Coburn that the Circuit Courts of Appeal aren't in the business of rewriting or overturning decisions of the Supreme Court, which is what the Supreme Court itself is likely to have done by then.

In the meantime, we can all be entertained by the comic spectacle of Faux News "expert" Charles Krauthammer* at once decrying the application of judicial empathy generally while publicly pleading for judicial empathy on behalf of the Ricci v. DeStefano plaintiffs.

And, naturally, Dr. Krauthammer's focusing unwaveringly on the result of the case rather than on the process of reasoning employed in reaching it, like all good judicial conservatives invariably do.

Next up: Stage 8 — Original intent and the right to bear nunchaku.

* See Axis IV Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Obama first president to actually read Bible

The twits on teevee's "Fox & Friends" were in quite a snit this morning, along with the professional Christians at the National Day of Prayer Task Force, and all because Obama takes Jesus of Nazareth at his word:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Looks pretty straightforward to me. And "their reward" sounds more than a little ominous, doesn't it. Be very afraid, ye hypocrites.

Local wingnut and prominent Christian James T. Harris writes:

This president honors God with his pen, but his heart is far from Him. Evidently Obama doesn't pray.

"Evidently." That's rich. So Harris is an empiricist now?

And they called it Bush Derangement Syndrome. Who knew Christianity was some sort of public piousness competition.

McIlheran's guide to the U.S. Constitution

One more chuckle from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's right-wing guy's latest barrel of laughs:

When public sentiment turned [against the AIG bonuses], Washington crafted law to snatch the money, a plain trashing of the Constitution.

And how exactly is some unspecified and as-yet unsigned "law" a "plain trashing of the Constitution"? McIlheran relies on that renowned constitutional authority, Charles Krauthammer:

Even worse are the clever schemes now being cooked up in Congress to retrieve the money by means of some retroactive confiscatory tax. The common law is pretty clear about the impermissibility of ex post facto legislation and bills of attainder. They also happen to be specifically prohibited by the Constitution.

Your guide to good reading on the Web.

But I always thought the Ex Post-Facto Clause contemplated adjustments in the federal criminal — not tax — law where attempts are made to apply those adjustments retroactively.

In Collins v. Youngblood [citation omitted], we reaffirmed that the Ex Post-Facto Clause incorporated "a term of art with an established meaning at the time of the framing of the Constitution." In accordance with this original understanding, we have held that the Clause is aimed at laws that "retroactively alter the definition of crimes or increase the punishment for criminal acts."

Thanks for clearing that up, Associate Justices Thomas, Scalia, Chief Justice Rehnquist, et al (Krauthammer, C., dissenting).

(Regular Faux News contributor Charles Krauthammer, incidentally, coined the term "Bush Derangement Syndrome," and as such continues amusingly in his role as one of its leading diagnostees.)

As for bills of attainder, Congress could with facility get around that prohibition by crafting legislation applicable beyond only "named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group."*

Well played, Patrick McIlheran, well played.

* If the courts don't look too closely at the legislative history.

Axis IV: Severity of Psychosocial Stressors

Event: A local conservative blogger, stressed into righteous panic and frenzy by Will Ferrell's ersatz Bush penis, predicts Obama will bring his wife on a date to view the theatrical penis, and then also host a special party at the White House when the penis is broadcast on HBO. Naturally, Obama has absolutely nothing to do with any of it.

Diagnosis: Axis I Bush Derangement Syndrome is more correctly an affliction of Bush-deranged conservative Republicans projecting.

(For prior penis apoplexy, see here.)

Stevens Derangement Syndrome*

I often get a huge kick out of our favorite Brookfield curmudgeon Dad29, but I'm concerned he's losing his grip on reality as we know it here (not that it was anything except tenuous to begin with).

* By its acronym, this common conservative affliction is interchangeable with "Souter Derangement Syndrome," or, to opposite symptom and effect, "Scalia Derangement Syndrome."

McAdams red-lines the spin tachometer

This is hilarious.

Some time ago, a reporter asked Barack Obama whether, if he is elected president, his administration would investigate alleged criminal acts by the Bushies related to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In response to the hypothetical question, Obama was careful to distinguish between disagreeable policy and actual, substantive crimes. This was clear to competent readers of English.

Several months later, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel "right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran completely ignored Obama's own response and fantasized that the Bush administration would be criminally prosecuted simply for poor policy decisions, and even desperately suggested that Obama's Department of Justice will prosecute "things" that were not even crimes, a truly remarkable feat.

We all had a good laugh about it here and here.

Yesterday, the comically oblivious John C. McAdams, an actual professor of political science at Marquette University who routinely demeans the intellectual competence of his academic colleagues — a textbook case of a pot calling the kettle black — repeated McIlheran's nonsense pretty much verbatim.

Challenged by a number of commenters at his blog to address Obama's clear statements, McAdams instead derided them for suffering from "Bush Derangement Syndrome," a phony diagnosis fabricated by the irascible Faux News "expert" Charles Krauthammer to assist conservatives in avoiding responding to legitimate criticisms of the current Republican administration.

Now, challenged by several more, McAdams still resists engaging plain English and posits that Obama (whose name McAdams can't even spell correctly) be investigated for "possible connections with terrorists" and calls the commenters "Bush bashers," even though all any of them did was ask McAdams to actually read what Obama said.

"If [Obama] broke the law, he definitely should be punished, don't you think?" says McAdams, despite that being not only essentially what Obama had said in response to the Philly.com reporter's original question, but precisely what McAdams's own interlocutors are asking of him and which he refuses to answer.

Does Allen-Bradley make an explosion-proof irony meter? If so, Professor John C. McAdams is in dire need of one.

Lest anyone finds it damn nigh impossible, as I do, to believe that John McAdams is really a university professor of political science, here is evidence.

It's a good thing for McAdams that Marquette maintains that webpage, because there certainly isn't any such evidence at McAdams's personal blog but rather much to mitigate against it.

He does, however, perform a hell of a job in demonstrating the expression "political science" to be a contradiction in terms.

American Presents! John McAdams

John "Perfesser" McAdams's appearance is part of a yearlong series of comedy blog posts which American TV co-sponsors with Marquette University and 620 AM WTMJ.

Obama May Prosecute Bush Administration For War Crimes

And don't you dare attempt to question McAdams's delusions, lest he personally diagnoses you with "Bush Derangement Syndrome," always a compelling rebuttal. This guy is an actual university professor.

Hard to believe.

Don't Worry, Kyoto

So Senator John McCain is concerned about climate change, and is even threatening to get all Kyoto-sanctionmonious about it. What's his point? If climate change is your issue, you're likely not about to be snowed by McCain's tepid rhetoric. No, the warmth McCain is concerned about is that emanating from his occasional manhug buddy, G.W. Bush XLIII, where a little global cooling is in order.

The real "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is a GOP affliction.

"Walnuts."