Josh Marshall wonders about Dick Cheney's hunting accident Saturday:

At a minimum it seems a tad ungentlemanly to put out word through your media operation that the guy you just shot was at fault for getting shot.

But I don't know. Tom Lehrer wrote a song about it many years ago:

I always will remember,
'Twas a year ago November,
I went out to hunt some deer
On a mornin' bright and clear.
I went and shot the maximum the game laws would allow,
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.

Anyway, this flap about whether the guy Cheney shot was to blame or not obscures discussion of the truly culpable party. I mean, who gave that man a gun in the first place?

The Washington Post has more.

Washington today is getting its biggest snowstorm in three years. I was there three years ago, so I can imagine what will happen.

The title kind of says it all.

Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn makes some good points about the Jyllands-Posten cartoons in his blog today:

[S]ome of the drawings make a point in exactly the same way that any good editorial cartoon makes a point, and they have a grown-up, even sophisticated purpose: To challenge those who use intimidation to block free expression and those who find in their religious texts justification for mass murder. Specifically, Jyllands-Posten commissioned the cartoons to make a defiant statement after learning that several Danish artists had refused to illustrate a children's book about Muhammad because they feared reprisals from Muslims who consider images of their prophet blasphemous.

I think all civilized people agree that cartoons are not justification for murder. The reverse of that statement is also true: all people who agree that cartoons are justification for murder are not civilized.

Charles Darwin was born 197 years ago this Sunday.

In his honor, I proudly link to Garry Trudeau getting it just right.

First, House Majority Leader John Boehner is renting an apartment from a D.C. lobbyist:

Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who was elected House majority leader last week, is renting his Capitol Hill apartment from a veteran lobbyist whose clients have direct stakes in legislation Boehner has co-written and that he has overseen as chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee.

The relationship between Boehner, John D. Milne and Milne's wife, Debra R. Anderson, underscores how intertwined senior lawmakers have become with the lobbyists paid to influence legislation. Boehner's primary residence is in West Chester, Ohio, but for $1,600 a month, he rents a two-bedroom basement apartment near the House office buildings on Capitol Hill owned by Milne, Boehner spokesman Don Seymour said yesterday. Boehner's monthly rent appears to be similar to other rentals of two-bedroom English basement apartments close to the House side of the Capitol in Southeast, based on a review of apartment listings.

I mean, come on. Pretend to have a little distance.

Second, due to Administration budget cuts (part of their effort to reduce people's faith in the federal government), the National Transportation Safety Board can't do its job:

Last year, the agency's accident investigators showed up at 62 percent of all fatal plane crashes, compared with 75 percent of all fatal crashes in 2001, according to NTSB numbers. But data from the Federal Aviation Administration—which is required to send an investigator to every accident and take note of whether the NTSB is on the scene—indicate that NTSB investigators showed up less than half the time last year.

"The consequences are, you're going to miss some things," said Gene Doub, a former NTSB accident investigator who teaches at University of Southern California. "Every one of these are not just dumb pilots. Some are airspace-system or training issues or airworthiness issues."

So once again, budget cuts have real consequences. The NTSB is one of our most important federal agencies—at least, if you ever get into an airplane, car, train, or ship—and needs enough money to do its job.

What's it going to take before we undo the Republicans' gutting of our government?

George Deutsch, the suit puppy who wanted to tell NASA scientists about science, has resigned:

George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said. Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.

Oops.

There was a dust-up between Senators Obama and McCain today, in which McCain mistook integrity for mere politics.

The Bush Administration (1077 days, 17 hours left) released its 2007 budget proposal today, which will cut or reduce 141 programs, including Medicare (down $36 billion), the drug-free schools initiative (axed), law-enforcement grants to help local jails house illegal immigrants after arrest (axed), Amtrak (down $300 million, or 25%), Employment and Training (down $648 million)...and on and on.

Remember, the Administration wants to cut the Federal government down to the size at which they can "drown it in the bathtub." Part of that strategy involves cutting programs, then using the resulting disaster (Katrina, anyone?) to "prove" that government programs "don't work."

Imagine if your kid gets Bs in school, then cuts studying 20%, then gets Cs, which prove studying "doesn't work." You'd ground his butt, wouldn't you?

The Administration thinks Americans are stupid. Let's prove them wrong.

There's a big flap up the street from Inner Drive Technology World HQ about Northwestern University engineering professor Art Butz, a holocaust denier. Seems Butz merrily burbled to an Iranian newspaper as part of the latter's reporting on the Iranian president's burbling on the same theme.

From the White House Office of Management and Budget 2007 defense budget fact sheet:

Since 2001, the Administration:

• Liberated nearly 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan

The Administration did this? You mean, all by itself? You mean, "liberated," as in "made free" (or—certainly not!—"made liberal")?

They have no shame.

Two noteworthy stories in today's Washington Post.

First, Boehner Opposes Sweeping Changes In Lobbyist Work. There's not a lot in the article we didn't already know, but I was thinking it might have been titled "Burglar Opposes Sweeping Changes to Door Locks" without too much irony. To repeat: lobbyists are only a symptom of the much larger problem of Republican corruption. Having the guys who broke the rules in the first place propose new rules insults our intelligence.

Second, Handful of Races May Tip Control of Congress. This filled me with a momentary twinge of optimism, but then a cursory reading calmed me down:

Democrats are poised to gain seats in the House and in the Senate for the first time since 2000. The difference between modest gains (a few seats in the Senate and fewer than 10 in the House) and significant gains (half a dozen in the Senate and well more than a dozen in the House) is where the battle for control of Congress will be fought.

So, unlike in countries with fully-realized democracies (like Canada, for example), we aren't really looking at a huge swing in either direction. There is something deeply troubling about a system in which 98% of the legislature is almost completely safe from a serious election challenge. Even the Soviet Union had more turnover.