Trying to comment on all of the utter disgrace coming out of the Bush administration, not to mention right-wing politics as a whole right now, would be like trying to run commentary on ten different baseball games at once–which is one reason I haven’t tried to over the past week (aside from being busy doing two jobs at once in addition during our busy weeks). But here is a look at only a few of the stories currently out there.

Alberto Gonzales has been responsible for such dishonor and misconduct that, under standards that were in effect before the Bush administration, he should have resigned in disgrace long ago. But this is the Bush administration, more specifically Bush 43, under which you can stay in office until you are actually put on trial for a crime, so long as you abide by the conservative code. Now there is solid proof that Gonzales perjured himself repeatedly–he is contradicted both by the records and by the head of the FBI in at least one case–but of course the White House is trying to spin it so that it only seemed that Gonzales was guilty of perjury–and the “Liberal Media™” obligingly and promptly changed headlines from “FBI Chief Contradicts Gonzales” to “FBI Chief Seems to Contradicts Gonzales.” At issue in this case is whether the NSA wiretapping program was discussed when Gonzales and Andy Card made their visit to Ashcroft in his hospital room; Gonzales emphatically denied it, but FBI chief Mueller directly contradicted him. There is a long list of other examples where Gonzales perjured himself (when he wasn’t practicing his contemptible string of “I don’t know”s and “I’m not answering that”s), but the hospital visit is the spotlight case of perjury at the moment. The New York Times is now reporting that it’s not just the FBI chief–now, at least six officials and former officials are directly stating that Gonzales lied.

At the heart of all this is the warrantless wiretapping case, which in itself is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment–something which might actually have been acted upon if the Republicans hadn’t been in charge of Congress at the time and squelched any investigation. I still say the Democrats should have, and still should start investigations anyway. But what the hell, it’s only the the Constitution and the Bill of Rights we’re talking about, right? It’s not as if the Bush administration hasn’t shredded those documents to pieces already anyway.

What else has been happening? We’ve found out yet again that a Bush political appointee blocked scientific reports that disagreed with the neocon worldview, this time preventing the Surgeon General from reporting on links between poverty and health. Yes, it has come to the point where something so blatantly obvious as the fact that poverty is not conducive to health is so politically damaging to the administration that the Surgeon General himself must be gagged and prevented from even reporting the matter, much less doing anything about it.

Meanwhile, politicization of the government proceeds unabashed. Bush has regularly appointed people wholly inappropriate for the positions they would hold–for example, appointing Steven Griles, a former lobbyist for the mining, oil, and gas industries, as Deputy Secretary of the Interior (he’s now serving a 10-month sentence for obstruction of justice); anti-union Linda Chavez, appointed by Bush to head up Labor, followed by another appointee who was a severe critic of Affirmative Action; Gale Norton, a property-rights advocate who said that companies have a “right to pollute,” to head up the Interior Department; and many, many others, including the current nominee for Surgeon General, a man who thinks that homosexuality is an illness that can be “cured.”

So, of course, the streak continues. Bush is now appointing David Palmer to head up the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The irony? He was himself the subject of “at least one complaint of employee abuse,” this while he was the chief of the employment litigation section in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Numerous veterans of that office decried Palmer’s nomination, claiming that he failed to protect equal employment rights for minorities, shutting down discrimination cases while at the same time pushing “reverse-discrimination” cases which favor white males.

More news on how badly the administration lied about Pat Tillman: new reports suggest that his shooting may not even have been an accident. The proximity of bullet holes in Tillman’s forehead suggest that he was fired upon with a machine gun at close range, as close as ten meters away or even closer–something which was also covered up. This is the second major revelation in the Tillman case since it was revealed that he was killed by friendly fire; newly released documents, in fact, say that there was no enemy activity in the area at all. Tillman’s death was lied about by a Bush administration struggling to overcome the news of Abu Ghraib; they took Tillman, who was a critic of the war (calling it “illegal,” and publicly planning to meet with Noam Chomsky, an Iraq War critic), and used him as a political prop to stoke patriotism to support the war. This new information has even sparked talk in far corners that the Bush administration actually had him killed to shut him up–but personally I see this as straying into “Vince Foster” territory.

Meanwhile, a soldier who served in Iraq is being pilloried by the right-wing chickenhawks for telling the truth, for reporting on the fact that war dehumanizes and that in a war, soldiers can find themselves doing things they would normally consider inappropriate–as if that’s not blindingly obvious. But right-wingers will not stand anyone “attacking the troops” (that, after all, is their prerogative).

Things are going so swimmingly in Iraq that the Iraqi Prime Minister is demanding that Bush remove General Petraeus. Why?

Well, in part because the U.S. is arming Sunni tribesmen in a feeble attempt to “fight al Qaeda.” This sounds great, but there’s a problem: it’s based upon fiction. In reality, al Qaeda is not so much a threat in Iraq, and would likely die off there once we leave. The real problem is the civil war. But in the Bush administration, politically contrived fictions are deciding policy, so in their worldview, the Iraqi civil war doesn’t exist, and al Qaeda is our chief enemy there.

So to solve the politically contrived fictions, we are arming Sunnis, who will use those arms to enflame the civil war. A perfect example of how political fantasies can destroy the balance of reason in reality. Bush seems to have found a general willing to enforce such madness, which is why the Iraqi Prime Minister is hopping mad, and is now threatening to further arm and support Shi’ite militias… which will deepen even further the civil war. Bush’s solution: to tell the Iraqi PM to “calm down.” Excellent diplomatic skills there.

Back in the U.S., more and more evidence is becoming available to prove that the Republican Party knowingly participated in “voter caging” projects in key election states in 2004. “Voter caging” is when mass mailings are made to voters, and any mail which is returned as “undeliverable” is then the basis for challenging that voter’s right to cast their vote. In one example, a large number of mailings were sent to mostly black voters who were college students; the mail was sent to the students at their school addresses during summer and was marked “do not forward.” In other words, the mail was designed specifically to generate unsendable mail, so as to deprive large numbers of these young people of their voting rights. Tens of thousands of such challenges were generated by the GOP via huge numbers of such mailings. You can watch the video report on the matter here on PBS NOW, which notes that the U.S. media is virtually ignoring the story, while it is making some headlines overseas. The Liberal Media™ strikes again!

So, what has the media has been sharply focused on in past days an weeks? Hillary Clinton’s cleavage and John Edwards’ haircuts.