Istook 2
Oh, how they twist in the wind. To wit:
"I have no earthly idea how it got in there," Frist said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "Nobody is going to defend this."
Tell that to Kevin (in the comments). Sure as hell seems like we found a defender of it right there.
Istook's deputy chief of staff, Micah Leydorf, said Sunday that neither she nor Istook had actually seen the provision and that it was added to the spending bill at the full committee level.
Oh reallllly. So this would then contradict all those earlier reports about how this amendment should have been known earlier (Thursday, that is) to critics since it was discussed and available. But now the two very people responsible won't even fess up to having been the ones slipping it into the 1000+ page bill.
The difference between idealists and realists apologists, I'd argue is that idealists have a sense of right and wrong ... and excercise it. The others make excuses, pass the buck, and toss intellectual honesty out the window at the first opportunity.
Go ahead Kevin ... tell us once more how an invasion of privacy is fitting with the grand conservative tradition. Or is Bill Frist now one of those Republicans not conservative enough for your taste?
Istook 2.1 ... UPDATE: Istook releases a statement which says the following (among other things):
"I didn't write it; I didn't approve it; I wasn't even consulted. My name shouldn't be associated with it, because I had nothing to do with it, and didn't even know about it until after the bill was done and was filed.""We have a problem with how bills like this are put together. On occasions, appropriations staff will take the initiative to insert language they believe will be non-controversial. They do this with the approval of full committee staff, but without the knowledge or approval of subcommittee chairman like me. That is what happened in this case.
HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!
Let's review Kevin's moment of insanity (heretofore refered to as "2004"):
The difference between idealists and realists (or liberals and conservatives in a broader sense), of course, is that one group of people believes the "system" is broken and can ultimately be perfected and fixed (and people too, for that matter). The other group realizes that of course the system and people are broken, and that it has ever been thus.Folks who look to perfection in politics may want to recheck their premises, no matter who is the majority party at any given time.
This is rich ... now Ernest Istook is a liberal by Kevin's definition. Who next? Tom Coburn?