If I’m going to live in a third world banana republic, things should be cheaper, the cities should be more colorful, the food should be better and more spicy, and my fellow citizens should be more attractive.

From today’s Washington Post we learn:

The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution: It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers.

…

The director of the White House Office of Administration, Timothy A. Campen, sent an e-mail titled “congressional questions” to majority and minority staff on the House and Senate Appropriations panels. Expressing “the need to add a bit of structure to the Q&A process,” he wrote: “Given the increase in the number and types of requests we are beginning to receive from the House and Senate, and in deference to the various committee chairmen and our desire to better coordinate these requests, I am asking that all requests for information and materials be coordinated through the committee chairmen and be put in writing from the committee.”

He said this would limit “duplicate requests” and help answer questions “in a timely fashion.”

It would also do another thing: prevent Democrats from getting questions answered without the blessing of the GOP committee chairmen.

“It’s saying we’re not going to allow the opposition party to ask questions about the way we use tax money,” said R. Scott Lilly, Democratic staff director for the House committee. “As far as I know, this is without modern precedent.”

Norman Ornstein, a congressional specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed. “I have not heard of anything like that happening before,” he said. “This is obviously an excuse to avoid providing information about some of the things the Democrats are asking for.”

A Democratic Senator cannot ask questions unless a Republican Senator approves the question.

OK. Who thinks we’re going to have a real election in 2004 if major networks aren’t allowed to do a mini-series about Reagan unless it is hagiographic?

We don’t have a real media at this point except for out of the mainstream magazines like The Nation that cannot compete with the big networks and newspapers. If they didn’t bother to question Bush during the first election about anything — his Viet Nam record, his corrupt business practices, etc. — do you think his Democratic opponent will have a chance when the GOP will argue that questioning the President during a war is unpatriotic?

As I heard Mark Crispin-Miller say last night, if Ralph Nader had never been born George W. Bush would still be our President. The kicked thousands of people off the voter rolls illegally in Florida (see Greg Palast), and the Supreme Court had his father’s appointees make sure the election went to the person with fewer popular votes.

The idea that people are offended when Reagan is portrayed as indifferent to people with AIDS is laughable. The first time he said the word was 1987, and by that point at least 25,000 Americans had died of AIDS.

In a portion of the script published in The New York Times last month, Reagan was depicted as uncaring and judgmental toward people with AIDS. “They that live in sin shall die in sin,” Reagan’s character tells his wife as she begs him to help AIDS victims.

Here is a quote via 365Gay.com

In “Dutch,” Reagan’s authorized biography, the author, Edmund Morris, writes that Reagan once said of AIDS, “Maybe the Lord brought down this plague,” because “illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments.”

Reagan, you will remember, divorced his first wife to marry Nancy. Illicit sex, indeed.