President Bush Welcomes His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to White House

... and puts his foot directly into his mouth:

"In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred..."

The simplistic chutzpah of this imbecilic president never fails to amaze me. Where does the president find the nerve to declare that we need to hear from the Pope that "all human life is sacred" when Bush has done nothing but disregard the Pope on this point. The pope opposes capital punishment, yet as Governor of Texas Bush presided over 151 executions. The Pope opposes the war in Iraq. The Pope opposed the execution of Saddam Hussein. The Pope has condemned the use of torture at all times and in all forms. The Pope, unlike Bush, is consistant. The Pope, unlike Bush, does not shrug his shoulders when soldiers and civilians are killed in the Middle East. The Pope, unlike Bush, does not make pious sounding noises about the towering moral value of zygotes while also embracing capital punishment. The Pope, for all his shortcomings, is a man of principle, and one of the scandals of this decade is how Rove and the media deceived the electorate into thinking George W. Bush was one, too.