Time isn't my favorite newsrag just for nothing.   They have some of the funniest columnists to be found anywhere, and one of my favorites is Joe Clown...er, sorry, Klein.  Joe's at his absolute funniest when he pretends to be a centerist; Joe, you see, is pretty far left, but by posing as a "moderate," he can present his fringe arguments as "reasonable" and have some hope of convincing us that they are.

Joe's latest effort at making us laugh hysterically is in last week's issue of Time, where he states that "he's been critical of the left on numerous issues in the past."  See there, he's a reasonable moderate.  Actually, Joe has been more critical of the left's tactics rather than their stances on issues, such as their "insistence on marginally relevant public option" that has "enabled the right's 'government takeover' disinformation jihad."  Bad move, libbies.  You should have just gotten your foot in the door with government-mandated private coverage.  There'll be plenty of time later to have government take over the whole program once you've gotten people used to surrendering their freedom.

But while that's funny, it's not really the punchline for this particular article.  No, Joe then takes conservatives to task for allowing themselves to be taken over by "nihilists and hypocrites more interested in destroying the opposition and gaining power than in the public weal."  No, there's no possibility that conservatives could be legitimately concerned that the Obama administration could be interested in having government take over health care; that's just a red herring proposed by opportunistic righties looking to embarrass the President and kick him out of office.  Well, Clown does concede that there's a "legitimate [my italics], if wildly improbable, fear that Obama's plan will start a process that will end with a health care system entirely controlled by the government."  Except for the part that says "wildly improbable" I'd swear he's been reading my blog.

But here's the real hoot.  Clown asserts that while Republicans are "opportunistic liars," he credits the Dems with being mostly "honorable public servants who make their arguments based on facts."  And to support his argument, he cites as examples Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich!  Let's take a look at the real facts, shall we?

Russ Feingold is a man who doesn't understand the simple English of the First Amendment to the Constitution:  "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech..."  As a result, he co-sponsored a notorious bill to limit political speech by imposing funding constraints on it.  Granted, he had some help from the Republicans on this one, to their discredit.  But there's no possible reading of the facts that changes what the First Amendment says.  Feingold also called for President Bush's censure in both 2006 and 2007 for his alleged mismanagement of the Iraq war and for his alleged "assault" against the Constitution.  In the real world, the Iraq War, while it hasn't been easy or quick, has implanted democracy into the Middle East somewhere besides Israel.  My opinion is that this will eventually stabilize the Arab world and lead to long-term peace in that region.  That is just an opinion, but the fact is that so far it seems to be moving in that direction.  So much for Russ Feingold and the facts.

Then there's Dennis "UFO-man" Kucinich.  Kucinich doesn't think, as Feingold does, that President Bush is necessarily a criminal; he thinks that it's more like Bush is mentally ill.  On the other hand, Kucinich does concede that if "there isn't something wrong with him, then there's something wrong with us."  Dennis sees UFOs.  I'll leave the reader to decide which one has something wrong with him, and who knows what "facts" look like.  Dennis is also another leftist politician who can't read plain English.  I know this because he wants to ban guns in clear violation of the Second Amendment:  "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."  There's no possible reading of the facts that changes what the Second Amendment says, either.  These stances along with his other nutty positions on energy, farming, space, and the economy clearly mark him as someone not in touch with the real world, so how could he even know what the facts are to argue them in the first place?

Finally, I want to revisit, in honor of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, the pack of lies he spewed while pioneering the practice of "borking" a Supreme Court nominee:

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is - and is often the only - protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice."

So, according to Clown, the left "makes their arguments based on facts," except, of course, fringe lefties.  So I guess we know where he thinks Teddy stands.  But not Joe Clown, nosirree.  He's a moderate, unbiased journalist, reporting the truth, which is that the left deals in facts and the right deals in "outright lies."  Riiiiight.