No, the rumors aren’t true. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales did not resign to take over management of Michael Vick’s kennel business. Yes, it would help Mr. Gonzales improve his image. But things never work out that neatly…

Eight US Attorneys were fired by the Bush Administration because they weren’t towing the partisan line. When will the media start asking about the 85 who weren’t fired? What have they been doing?

While driving home just now, I heard Rachel Maddow say that Molly Ivins passed away. I’d heard recently that her breast cancer had come back after several years in apparent remission.

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve encouraged someone to read Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?, I’d be a rich man. Then again, we’re all the richer for having had her brighten our lives with her poignant, hilarious, and prescient commentary.

Regular readers of this blog will note that I’ve quoted her a few times. Her insights into Texas politics are essential reading for anybody serious about understanding electoral politics in America. Forget deToqueville, Ivins is your Rosetta Stone to understanding America’s chronic political ills. ;)

Do yourself a favor, go buy these (among her other books…):

Rest in peace, Molly…

This past week I heard an interesting interview on The Al Franken Show, with Brooke Allen, author of Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers. She is a historian who was tired of hearing Christian conservatives talking about how America is a “Christian Nation.” Her research shows that our Founding Fathers were pretty vehemently against any role for organized religion in our civic life.

More than a few politicians and conservative religious figures have offered statements to the effect that there really is no “wall of separation between church and state” in the Constitution, and even if you can interpret the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as such, it really wasn’t the intent of the Founders to create such a wall.

Professor Allen dug up a fascinating quote from Thomas Jefferson in a letter he wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association on January 1, 1802:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

I tend to think that Jefferson knew a thing or two about what the Founders really meant. So when you hear someone say that the separation between church and state is the construction of “activist judges,” you can be assured they’re full of it.

After reading the current controversy about the ABC “docu-drama” The Path to 9/11, it’s pretty clear that the wholesale story line fabrications, extensive right-wing connections of the producers, and the propaganda-laced Student Study Guides are what pass for masturbation fodder for Bush Administration loyalists.

So, today I had an idea for a docu-drama: the story opens with Robert Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Co., snorting cocaine off the belly of an underage Thai hooker. He has a flashback to a drug-fueled orgy he had with George W. Bush in the 1970s in which he learned the finer points of snorting cocaine off hookers’ bellies. He is roused from his stupor by the insistent clatter of a unicorn banging its horn against the door jamb of his hotel room, reminding him he’s late for his meeting to discuss some script notes about Pirates of the Caribbean III.

I think it’s a winner. It’s quite fanciful, but by throwing in one true story element — George W. Bush’s coke habit — the rest of the “docu-drama” can be just as easily passed off as reality, much as ABC hopes to do with The Path to 9/11.

Before you send me hate mail, I realize how absurd my story premise is. Iger would never involve himself in script decisions… he has people to do that for him.