Too Right, Mate!


Before I succumb to the lure of the garden and today’s near 80-degree temperatures, I’d like to present two items that caught my attention late last evening and early this morning.
Firstly, I felt myself fortunate that I stumbled upon the Beeb's web page in time to watch, George Galloway, the Respect Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow’s entire testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s hastily arraigned hearing on the United Nation’s Oil-For-Food program.
The feisty Glaswegian, expelled from Tony Blair’s Labour Party in 2003 for "bringing the party into disrepute", took no prisoners in his dealing with our own ham-fisted, unlettered and disreputable Senate enablers of the criminal Bush foreign policy.
Galloway’s first punch drew blood from the nearly bloodless Senator Norm Coleman:

“I know that standards have slipped in Washington in recent years, but for a lawyer, you're remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice…I'm here today, but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question."

According to the London Guardian, before the honorable Member made Norm his bitch, he telegraphed the frankness of his upcoming testimony in this hallway response to a question posed by the alcohol-impaired talking head Christopher Hitchens:

"You're a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay. Your hands are shaking. You badly need another drink.”

The BBC, today, is offering video of Galloway highlights.
I highly recommend it as I gather the failed American corporate press giving it a wide berth.
Here is background on Galloway’s Labour expulsion and his successful libel suit against Rupert Murdock’s Daily Telegraph.

Closer to home, the Kentucky patronage scandal proceeds as the offices of top gubernatorial aides and Republican party chiefs were examined yesterday afternoon under Warrants issued by a Franklin County District Judge.
Warrants were served on the Governor and Lt. Governor’s offices, the office of the Treasurer of the Kentucky Republican party and “others” having office space “along the suite of gubernatorial offices in the Capitol”.
The most interesting portion of this morning’s Cincinnati Enquirer report described the patronage jobs as being in the Transportation Department’s central office and in highway garages across Kentucky:

Documents show consideration given to loyalty to past Republican efforts and relations to local power brokers.

Ah, privilege!

Images: Reuters, Google
- posted by Sean @ 1:23 PM