FEINSTEIN GOES ROGUE.... Just a few weeks ago, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) joined her colleagues in urging Rod Blagojevich not to fill Illinois' vacant Senate seat, warning him that his appointment would not be seated. Yesterday, she changed her ...

(Former Wyoming Sen. Alan) Simpson, a loyal Republican, used to say: "We have two political parties in this country, the Stupid Party and the Evil Party. I belong to the Stupid Party."

From 2006:

With all of the hype and hubbub leading into the November elections, the old saw about there being two political parties in the U.S., the Stupid party and the Evil Party, is playing out in spades. With the voter backlash against vacillating, ineffective, and corrupt Republicans, there are three simple questions Republicans should be asking voters: What would the Democrats have done? What will the Democrats do? Would the U.S. be better off under Democrat control? Instead of focusing on those questions, Republicans are ignoring them in favor of fear-mongering and attack ads.

From 2007:

The Stupid Party -- How the Democrats earned the epithet previously reserved for Republicans.

There's plenty more where those came from.

The opposite, actually.

"Perhaps Mr. Cole would like to collect the last dozen or so headlines from any Big Media source dealing with the venality of elected officials and give us a scorecard on how many were Republicans and how many were Democrats. "

I'd guess about 9:1 would be about Democratic politicians, or rather one particular one (hint: 'governor' and 'land of Lincoln').

The chief difference between the two parties is that the Republicans screw things up out of venality, the Democrats do it because they are idiots.

That's really interesting. My understanding is that in Washington, D.C., it was the Democrats that were known as the evil party and the Republicans that were known as the stupid party.

Perhaps Mr. Cole would like to collect the last dozen or so headlines from any Big Media source dealing with the venality of elected officials and give us a scorecard on how many were Republicans and how many were Democrats. Of course, the scorecard may get a bit muddled because of Big Media's habit of reporting on venal politicians of no discernable party affiliation, and we all know what that means, don't we? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more.

That's arguable, but I don't wish to argue it.

For the record, I don't think things were especially tense then or now. We currently have no plausible existential threats. America hasn't had to truly fight for its security in 60 years.

Some previous very successful heads of the CIA had no real prior intel experience. George H.W. Bush comes to mind.

I think things are a little more intense today than they were back then. I doubt there would be much grumbling about Panetta if there wasn't so much going on at the moment and for the foreseeable future.

Too bad that was of no discernible interest to her when the President was a Republican.

Panetta can go into CIA, kick ass & take names, and get some smart people running the place. That would be a big change, considering that, no lie, the nation's premier intel agency was being run by people who acted as if torture were the best way to conduct interrogations.

Having said that, I think the real point here is that Feinstein had no problem rubber-stamping every Bush appointee, and now appears to be knee-capping her own party's pick before he even has a hearing. That simply makes no sense to me, either politically or in the service of the good government points that you correctly bring up.

Dawn Johnsen is the pick that really fills me with pride though.

Feinstein is not a person for whom I have much respect. She, like Charles Schumer, pushed for Mike Mukasey, who has done a very bad job IMO, and also she pushed for telecom immunity for whatever crimes they may have committed (and we will probably never know what those were).