If you were not a bride I would kiss you goodbye.

Kossacks are besides themselves because Harry Reid has apparently promised Joe Lieberman he'll keep his seniority and chairmanship regardless of the results of the election. This is with most political analysts seeing moderate to big pick-ups for dems in the Senate this November. They can't seem to figure out why Reid is doing this or what Lieberman has on the Majority Leader that would keep him from throwing that traitorous little toad over a cliff. The man is actively campaigning for John McCain for God's sakes.

I would say that Reid's action makes perfect sense if you consider what I talked about here. The Democrats will need better than a 61-39 majority to get ANYTHING done in the next congress. Republicans will simply declare they're filibustering every single piece of legislation that comes up. Reid's kissing Lieberman's ass because he's going to need the little pint-sized Napoleon.

Of course Reid could take some of the actions that progressives have been screaming for this last few years, not the least of which is to force Republicans into true filibusters rather than just the declarations of same they're able to get away with now. Drive their obstruction into the open. Of course that would be too confrontational. That would just make the Democrats look mean and go against the comity in the Senate so we just can't have it.

Instead we let ourselves be pushed around by someone who was thrown out of the Democratic party by it's voters and is currently campaigning to ensure that the two Senate Democrats still in the race for the presidency aren't allowed into the White House to secede Bush. Mark my words: Lieberman will be speaking at the Republican convention and thumbing his nose at everything the Democratic party supposedly holds dear.

But at least he'll still have his Chairmanship.

We keep you alive to serve this ship. So row well, and live.

This story hits the Republican anti-immigrant base/ support the troops/ Bush is a moral man trifecta.

CBS/AP) While the U.S. military searches for a soldier missing in Iraq, kidnapped by insurgents possibly allied with al Qaeda, his wife back home in Massachusetts may be deported by the U.S. government.

Army Spec. Alex Jimenez, who has been missing since his unit was attacked by insurgents in Iraq on May 12, had petitioned for a green card for his wife, Yaderlin Hiraldo, whom he married in 2004.

Their attorney, Matthew Kolken, said 23-year-old Hiraldo illegally entered the United States in 2001 to reunite with her husband, whom she had met in her native Dominican Republic and later married at his New York State Army base in 2004.

If you haven't been following the search for the two soldiers then suffice it say it looks like Jimenez is most likely dead. Judging by state of the body of his squad mate that they recovered it's a good guess to say his death was probably pretty horrible.

You could argue that he knew the risks when he signed up and that he probably signed up just to gain residency for himself and his wife. I don't care. The least you could say is that he took that risk. Most of the critics of immigration seem to fall squarely into the chickenhawk category when it comes to the war in Iraq from where I'm sitting. He's obviously a braver man than they, regardless of his reasons.

All that doesn't even begin to touch on the thing that really disgusts me about this story. The Bush administration could give her amnesty with a wave of a pen. It doesn't appear to this point that they've avoided doing so out of any weird idea about sticking to the letter of the law (but only on immigration, mind you) but rather that they simply don't care.

It's just another vivid reminder that the soldiers and their families are worthless in the eyes of this administration unless it's in their capacity as props to stand behind the President while he delivers a speech on how he's tough on terror.