GOP Hypocrites of the Week

[lame54]

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/honors/113

John Bolton and John Yoo

Welcome back to the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

This week, we have two Neo-con uber hypocrites to receive the weekly prestigious BuzzFlash award: John Bolton and John Yoo.

We need go no further than the first sentence of an op-ed they co-wrote on January 4 in The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/opinion/05bolton.html?_r=1

"The Constitution's Treaty Clause has long been seen, rightly, as a bulwark against presidential inclinations to lock the United States into unwise foreign commitments."
Mr. "Bombs away" and Mr. "Torture Memo" sure know how to make you laugh uproariously with one short sentence of unmitigated hypocrisy. They go on to "warn," apparently without any self-knowledge of irony:

The framers of the Constitution designed the treaty process with a bias against "entangling alliances," as Thomas Jefferson described them in his first inaugural address. They designated the Senate as the body responsible to protect the interests of the states from being bargained away by the president in deals with foreign nations. The framers required a supermajority to ensure that treaties would reflect a broad consensus and careful, mature decision-making.
Bolton and Yoo were two of the most ardent cheerleaders for the Bush/Cheney claim of unitary authority. If Bush's agreement with Iraq on a long-term treaty that had to be approved by the Iraqi legislature -- but which the White House claimed did not have to be approved by Congress, even by a simple majority -- wasn't a violation of the balance of powers, then what is? Isn't this "treaty" with Iraq that ties the hands of Obama the essence of a foreign entanglement?

What is really troubling Bolton and Yoo is that the Obama Administration may actually honor international agreements and rejoin the world community. So they hope the last renegade Neo-con, Neo-Confederate Republican senators will block any Obama Administration efforts that would accept the assumption that America is part of an international team of nations.

Of course, if you're a Republican president named Bush, Bolton and Yoo firmly support entering or exiting any international agreement unilaterally. If you're a Democratic president named Obama, you must get the approval of a reactionary Republican Senate minority to do the same thing.

Now that's some hypocrisy!

And that is why John Bolton and John Yoo -- the two Johns -- are the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrites of the Week.

Remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

[JHB]

1. "Flip-Floppers"

Their words. Make them eat them.

[gratuitous]

2. Still don't know why the Times ran their screed

Isn't this sort of red-crayon scribbling usually reserved for press releases from "think" tanks? The Times definitely gets an assist for publishing Bolton and Yoo's drivel.