Read about one conservative saying that banning “partial birth abortions” is a good thing because the remaining legal alternatives have a higher risk of injuring or killing the mother.

Meanwhile the GOP chief from Arkansas said that “we need some attacks on American soil like we had on [9/11]…” in order to understand why Bush should be appreciated.

Here’s a bold move by McCain in the Republican debate:

I’m going to give you a little straight talk. This war was very badly mismanaged. And Americans have made great sacrifices, some of which were unnecessary because of this mismanagement of the war.

What courage! In the face of being identified as tied to a failing, greatly unpopular administration, McCain says he’s going to give “straight talk” and then promptly blames the administration. How brave of him to be so candid about someone else’s mistakes, especially when McCain gains personally by distancing himself from them. He should get a freedom medal for that!

More brilliance from the Republican debate: Mitt Romney channels George Bush:

Well, the question is, kind of, a non sequitur, if you will. What I mean by that — or a null set — that is that if you’re saying let’s turn back the clock and Saddam Hussein had opening up his country to IAEA inspectors and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein therefore not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn’t be in the conflict we’re in.But he didn’t do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in.

Note for those people who have already forgotten: Hussein did let the inspectors in, and they didn’t find any WMD. Nevertheless, the Washington Post identified as “gaffe of the night” Governor Huckabee’s misstatement that the previous day was Ronald Reagan’s birthday. Yep, that’s a lot worse.

And this from the Bush FCC chairman, on a court ruling that “non-literal,” “fleeting expletives” were not actionable offenses that the FCC could clamp down on:

If ever there was an appropriate time for Commission action, this was it. If we can’t restrict the use of the words “f * * *” and “s * * *” during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want.

I know that it is in reference to the swear words in dispute, but nevertheless, the Bush FCC chairman expressing dismay that “Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want” is, you have to admit, both fitting to administration policy and, most likely, despite the immediate context, expressive of an ultimate agenda beyond the scourge of potty mouth.

In a rather bizarre instance of irony, however, the network that allowed the words to be uttered–the aforementioned “Hollywood”–is none other than, you got it: Fox.

However, probably the biggest shame among conservatives this week is the fact that, of all people, Scooter Libby was showered with letters sent to his judge pleading for lenience in his sentencing. These letters came from people like Henry Kissenger, Richard Perle, General Richard Meyers, General Peter Pace, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and a host of other conservative luminaries. In their letters, they pleaded for the judge to go easy of Libby because he’s such an admirable human being.

Now, let’s think about this. Scooter Libby probably wasn’t the mastermind of this whole thing, but he wasn’t a pure fall guy either–he was at the very least in the thick of it all. We’re talking about someone who, in order to support a sham war that has brought this country to near ruin, to support a president in a shameful lie, as an act of petty political retribution, took the identity of a covert CIA agent working to find WMD, and released it publicly–thereby ruining the agent’s life’s work, derailing a part of our own national security, and putting the lives of people the agent ran in danger. Libby helped destroy the work of a CIA agent working against WMD so his president could lie and get us into a futile war.

And in his defense comes out virtually all of neocon Washington, high-profile people arguing that this is a man of great virtue and high moral standing who does not deserve to be sent to jail.

Lawrence O’Donnell makes an excellent point, showing that the injustice here goes even deeper:

Now I’m waiting for every one of these letter writers, especially Kissinger, especially Rumsfield, especially Pace, I’m waiting for their letters to the court martials that are going on right now in the United States, young Marines who were put in impossible situations in Iraq, Keith, who find themselves on trials now that will jeopardize their freedom for the rest of their lives because of split seconds decisions they made in a war that they should not have been in.When those kids get sentenced in their court martials, if they do, in this country, is General Peter Pace going to write a letter to their sentencers about what kind of mercy they deserve? Is Henry Kissinger who never ever saw a shot fired in his life, never spent a moment in battle, but was a champion of sending soldiers into battle in this country and to their deaths, is he going to write a letter asking for mercy for these American Marines who found themselves in this impossible war situation in Iraq, and now find themselves on trial for their lives? Who are the letters going to come from for them?

Of course, by now we should all be aware of the fact that people like this don’t give a rat’s ass about the soldiers, and would happily let them rot away in prison, especially if it helped to take heat off of the conservative cause. These people see our soldiers as disposable cannon fodder, good for little else than serving the neocon cause.

These conservatives have no shame. And to top it all off, virtually everyone expects George W. Bush to pardon Libby before he serves even a day of his sentence. And that will probably happen.