The Bush administration’s energy policies from 2001 to the present have supported fossil fuels above all other energy sources, emphasizing the need to find new sources of petroleum, support new technologies for liquefied natural gas, and move forward with “clean” coal technologies. Over the course of Bush’s presidency, there is some mixed, but clearly secondary, support for renewable forms of energy and conservation/efficiency.

In a speech on his energy proposals in January, 2007, President Bush seemed to break new ground.  But his calls for reduced U.S. gasoline usage and raising fuel-economy standards are far less than is needed to reduce our growing dependence on oil or stem the rise in greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. One of his featured proposals calls for an increase in the production of corn-based ethanol, but his estimates of the impact seem unrealistic. Steven Mufson, Washington Post correspondent, notes that industry experts say that it would take more than all of last year’s U.S. corn harvest to make enough ethanol to meet Bush’s target of replacing 15 percent of the projected annual gasoline consumption in 2017 (1-24-07).

“The moral duty of man consists of imitating the moral goodness and benificence of God manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. Everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty.”

–Thomas Paine from The Age of Reason

Despite the trappings of a civilized culture and the incredibly persistent myth of our moral exceptionalism, we in the United States are collectively a group of mean-spirited, depraved barbarians. Sparing our psyches the pangs of conscience by ferociously devouring the corporate media’s seemingly endless supply of rationalizations, euphemisms, historical revisions, distractions, denials, distortions, and affirmations of our pathological self-absorption, we each carry a degree of responsibility in the infliction of immeasurable unnecessary pain and suffering upon the rest of the Earth’s sentient beings.

Dedicated to the cowardly Democratic Party members whose votes affirmed the Bush administration's unfounded right to illegal searches and seizures and warrantless wiretapping of citizens in the global war on terror:

(sung to the tune of the children's song "This Old Man'')

This Democrat, he caved in
He let Bush swipe our
Civil liberties again

(Refrain)
With a knickknack paddywhack
Give those Dems a bone
This Democrat went limping home

This Democrat, he did, too
First search and seizure
Now eavesdropping, too

With a knickknack paddywhack
Give those Dems a bone
This Democrat went limping home

This Democrat, didn't understand
A congressional majority
Means you have the upper hand

With a knickknack paddywhack
Give those Dems a bone
This Democrat went limping home

This Democrat, he flipped, too
Let Dubya take your library card
And flip FISA, too

With a knickknack paddywhack
Give those Dems a bone
This Democrat went limping home

Congress put its stamp of approval on the unconstitutional wiretapping of Americans by amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the "Protect America Act of 2007." 

The new law takes the power to authorize electronic surveillance out of the hands of a judge and places it in the hands of the attorney general (AG) and the director of national intelligence (DNI).  FISA had required the government to convince a judge there was probable cause to believe the target of the surveillance was a foreign power or the agent of a foreign power.  The law didn't apply to wiretaps of foreign nationals abroad.  Its restrictions were triggered only when the surveillance targeted a U.S. citizen or permanent resident or when the surveillance was obtained from a wiretap physically located in the United States.  The attorney general was required to certify that the communications to be monitored would be exclusively between foreign powers and there was no substantial likelihood a U.S. person would be overheard.

Until the ethical and legal questions that trail Karl Rove are answered, his own explanation for abruptly departing the White House must suffice. Perhaps he is the first pol in history to flee Washington because he actually wants to spend more time with his family, as he said. Why he is leaving matters much less, however, than the opportunities he squandered and the wreckage he leaves behind.

            Inevitably, thousands of words will be devoted to his electoral achievements and his ultimate failure to "realign" American politics -- including a book he apparently plans to write. His vision of a new Republican era proved to be more grandiose than grand. As "the architect," he turned out to be more journeyman than genius.

            If Rove's quest was finally frustrated, he certainly exercised enormous influence at a fateful time in our history. His petty nastiness came to matter a great deal, not because of elections won or lost but because of the polarization he exaggerated and exploited. His bad advice to George W. Bush weakened us in the name of patriotism.