Taxpayer-financed Journalist: Arrest Bush!

"Lying" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, holding detainees at Gitmo, and prosecuting the saintly matron of all things domestic, Martha Stewart. Those are just three reasons taxpayer-financed journalist Bonnie Erbe finds for filing criminal charges on outgoing President George W. Bush and his dastardly underlings.

The PBS "To the Contrary" host and U.S. News and World Report contributor shared her thoughts in a January 13 entry on her Thomas Jefferson Street blog:

I understand the politics of letting bygones be bygones. But Bush has so thoroughly destroyed this country and encouraged such heretofore unimaginable abuses of office (lying about weapons of mass destruction to lead the country into an unnecessary war; the firings and politicization of the attorneys general; the prosecution of active Democrat Martha Stewart for relatively minor stock abuses while permitting subprime lenders and GOP donors to swindle billions from the economy; the abuses at Guantánamo; and the list goes on and on and on) that to act as if this never happened is to encourage future abuse.

Bush's behavior, and that of his subordinates, should be punished so future presidents and their appointees will not feel free to mimic it with impunity.

But wait, there's more.

In another blog post, the liberal journalist shows that while she is happy to be rid of President Bush, she still hasn't forgiven the vast right-wing conspiracy for Hillary Clinton's demise in the Democratic primary, even though, well, it was a Democratic primary and Erbe's imagined arch-villain Rush Limbaugh urged his listeners to vote for Clinton in open primary states:

Hillary Clinton ran a flawed campaign, which she launched as a flawed candidate (she had very high negative ratings from voters). That said, however, if the sexist derision and insults hurled at her during her run (being called a she-goat, her laugh being called a cackle, etc.) had been translated into racial slurs and used instead against Barack Obama, they would never have been tolerated. Yet, to this day, no one has been forced to apologize to Clinton for all the gender-based abuse she had to endure.

Right-wing radio mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh made derogatory comments about Clinton, asking whether the nation wanted to watch her age in the White House (as if he could walk down a runway in Milan).

[...]

White men still feel more comfortable sharing power with men of color than they do with white women or women of color. The 15th Amendment to the Constitution, granting black men the right to vote, was ratified in 1870. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote on the federal level, came 50 years later.

The first black man elected to the U.S. House of Representatives was Joseph Rainey, who won his seat in 1870 during Reconstruction. The first woman was Jeannette Rankin in 1916.

Part of the reason for women's slow progress is women ourselves: Organizing women along political lines is like herding cats. African-Americans, on the other hand, stand up for members of their community. Recall the Rev. Jesse Jackson's boycotts in the 1980s of companies that did not promote enough African-Americans or of franchises that discriminated against African-American owners. One could never get women to boycott a company because it refused to hire enough women. Until we get there, we need to accept responsibility for holding ourselves back.