Illinois congressman Ray LaHood wants DeLay out, and other House Republicans share his sentiment:

"We need to clean up our House here very quickly or a year from now we'll be the minority party," said LaHood...

Oh, that's a great reason to finally do the right thing after eleven years of participating in your party's corruption. "Quick, we have to show voters that we're sorry and we'll be good, so they won't put us in minority-status time-out for another four decades!" Yeah, don't do the right thing because it's the right thing, do it so that you can be rewarded.

What an asshole.

The Republicans are at each other's throats on immigration. Business groups are reacting with outrage to the latest GOP proposal to require them to document that each of their immigrants are here in this country legally and require them to play Big Brother and do the job of the Federal Government.

As Democrats, we believe in individual responsibility. That means that if we pass a law, we provide the resources to enforce the law ourselves, not make other people into the eyes and ears of the government. Furthermore, we support increased immigration, as it would mean more jobs and more revenue for the government. We're the ones who put the money in, and they're the ones who would take the money out by shutting the country's door to most immigrants.

"What's offensive here is not the imperfect balancing of minority and majority. What's offensive -- also surreal and absurd -- is the notion that Christianity, a faith claimed by 76 percent of all Americans, is somehow being intimidated into nonexistence. Some of the earliest Christians were stoned for their beliefs. In some parts of the world today, Christianity is a crime punishable by death. And the AFA is feeling persecuted because a sales clerk says 'Happy holidays?'

"That's not persecution. It's a persecution complex.

"And it trivializes what Christians claim to uphold: the baby born of a virgin's womb."

...sums up perfectly how much the Republican Party hates America:

Not so long ago the talk was all about the self-perpetuating machine the Republicans were constructing in Washington.

The image was of links in a chain of power that the Democrats could never break. The GOP, having captured both houses of Congress and the White House, could press lobbyists to hire only Republicans and give money only to Republicans. The money would guarantee dominance in state legislatures. The legislatures would redraw congressional districts so that Democrats could never win. And if anyone objected, too bad; Republican-appointed judges could be counted on to slap down any complainers.

In other words, the GOP has tried to establish a political monopoly at all levels of government that would deprive millions of voters of their right to be represented.

The 2006 election may be the last chance America has of reviving its ailing two-party system, a system that guarantees that political consumers have a choice, and a chance at having their needs heard and responded to.

The Republican White House's racist disenfranchisement of minority voters has reached a new low:

The Justice Department has barred staff attorneys from offering recommendations in major Voting Rights Act cases, marking a significant change in the procedures meant to insulate such decisions from politics, congressional aides and current and former employees familiar with the issue said.

Disclosure of the change comes amid growing public criticism of Justice Department decisions to approve Republican-engineered plans in Texas and Georgia that were found to hurt minority voters by career staff attorneys who analyzed the plans. Political appointees overruled staff findings in both cases.

The GOP has relentlessly attacked every Democratic power bloc; union members, senior citizens, and minorities have been targeted by the Republican Party's pursuit of a one-party electoral system, a move predicated on the fact that eliminating the competition is easier than stealing elections by vote-rigging.

The Republicans made a monumental political blunder when they passed the $100 billion tax cut bill on a vote that was almost totally split among party lines. They handed us a perfect opportunity for us to brand us and brand them as well. By this vote, we have shown that we are the party that puts the money in, while the GOP has shown that they are the party that keeps the money out.

The Republicans ignore a basic fact of life year in and year out -- it costs money to run this country effectively. Therefore, they can never be credible again when talking about the sanctity of human life, because upholding the sanctity of human life involves quality of life. And they can never be credible again when talking about jobs, the economy, health care, or education, because it costs money to fund them. On the other hand, we have always fought to put money into the economy so people can have a better quality of life.

Republican governor Haley Barbour is livid that the House is taking its sweet time delivering more Katrina-related pork to his niece, who just happens to be "one of the biggest Mississippi-based winners of federal contracts for Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts."

If only Katrina had taken-out the governor's mansion... Mississippi and the rest of the country would be better-off.

So, Joe Lieberman may soon be rebuked by several Democratic organizations, while rumors abound that the Bush Junta may recruit him as the next DOD secretary, thus giving the Republican governor of his state the chance to appoint a GOPster to Joe's Senate seat.

To anyone fretting over the Republicans gaining another seat in the Senate, allow me to allay your fears: Joe Lieberman IS a Republican, for all intents and purposes, so this really wouldn't be a loss for Democrats.

Further, Lieberman would be inheriting the Iraq quagmire, and maybe when he sees what kind of cluster fuck it really is, he'll betray the Bushites just as he has repeatedly betrayed the party he pretends to be a member of... Although I won't be holding my breath for THAT event.

Too bad Lieberman doesn't show the same devotion to America and the Democratic Party that he shows to Israel and the Bush Administration; he'd be a better person -- and a better Senator -- if he did.

Here's a question: Why does the GOP care so much about Howard Dean? I'm not being sarcastic - I'm really asking. Tonight they pounced on Dean for an interview he gave to a radio station in San Antonio. Dean compared the war in Iraq to Vietnam and said the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong." Cue Ken Mehlman:

In predicting that America will lose the war in Iraq, Howard Dean is the latest national Democrat leader to embrace retreat and defeat in the central front in the War on Terror.  His outrageous prediction sends the wrong message to our troops, the enemy, and the Iraqi people just 10 days before historic elections.  Democrats across the nation should stand up and reject the pessimism of their chairman and strategy of defeat by their Congressional leaders.

Let's look at this.

"A Texas judge declined to dismiss money-laundering charges against Representative Tom DeLay, paving the way for a trial and preventing the lawmaker from reclaiming his post as U.S. House majority leader.

"Judge Pat Priest said he rejected a motion by DeLay's lawyers to drop all the charges, in an e-mail to reporters. He dismissed one charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering."

The fall-out from recently-released Justice Department memos pertaining to Tom DeLay's gerrymandering of Texas continues:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Friday said that the Justice Department was not motivated by politics when it approved a controversial Texas congressional redistricting plan in 2003, overriding objections within the Civil Rights Division that minority voters would be harmed.

...Gonzales' insistence that politics played no role wasn't shared by some Civil Rights Division veterans. They say the Texas case, joined by the department's recent approval of a Georgia voter ID law later rejected by the court, suggests a troubling trend of politics trumping Voting Rights Act considerations.

"The decisions are politically driven," said American University law professor Richard Ugelow, a 29-year Civil Rights Division veteran who joined the exodus of career staff from Justice in recent years.

William Yeomans, a senior voting-rights expert who left the Justice Department earlier this year, said: "It's clear who benefits from those decisions."

He and other division veterans say it is highly unusual for political appointees to override a unanimous recommendation by career lawyers.

"It's probably not an overstatement to say it's unprecedented for that kind of overruling of the career staff to occur," said David Becker, who left the division last April after seven years.

Nancy Pelosi is now working to create an independent commission to investigate the Justice Department's actions, as well as a disturbing pattern within the DOJ of putting the desires of the Republican Party before the law of the land.

It's a good thing the executives of the pharmaceutical industry have unfettered access to cholesterol-fighting drugs, because the Republican-controlled Congress just handed their companies enough Medicaid-related pork to give the bastards heart conditions.

What am I saying? Those sociopathic f**ks don't have hearts.

As part of a House budget bill that reduces spending on Medicaid prescription drugs, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. and other businesses secured a provision ensuring that their mental health drugs continue to fetch top price at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the states.

The provision -- inserted by Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), whose district flanks Lilly's Indianapolis headquarters -- would largely exempt antipsychotic and antidepressant medications from a larger measure designed to steer Medicaid patients to the least expensive treatment options.

At a time when states are seeing less federal dollars due to the Bush Junta's tax cuts for the wealthy, a time when many people on Medicaid have to choose between buying food or buying medication, after five years of medication costs not just rising but skyrocketing past inflation, the GOP decides to show "compassion" to a multi-billion dollar industry, wrecking millions of live in the process.

How is it that Congressional Republicans haven't been lynched yet?

Break out the champagne: Uber-corrupt Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham is expected to plead guilty today to charges stemming from his bribery scandal.

...the Republican Party has left Tom DeLay.

Sound-off! Tell everyone what you most hate about the Republican Party, or write a list of all the things that the GOP has done, or claims to stand for, or does stand for, that you find simply appalling. Or share any redeeming quality or qualities you believe the party possesses (there must be something the GOP is good for, other than serving as a bad example).