...It pours.

And pours, and pours and pours.

Everyone knows by now that Newt Gingrich pulled a Jimmy Swaggart by confessing his sins to fundamentalist America. One of them, anyway. All that remains is the speculation. Personally, I see no reason whatsoever for him to have done that, and released a pandering book aimed squarely at the fundies, if he weren't quite serious about a presidential bid. But the one thing he's definitely done is given every other candidate the chance to say "Would you trust a president who had impeached a predecessor for cheating on his wife at the same time he was cheating on his second wife?" Newt tried to counter that in advance by claiming that it was the principle of lying under oath that he had a problem with. And if he's dumb enough to think that will fly, he's a genuine idiot. And I'd love to see him run.

But he's still the same ol' father of today's Congressional neo-fascists.

Hypocrite? Not me, says Newt.

"I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed ... I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials,'" he says.

Elsewhere in the interview, Gingrich says he doesn't believe in "situational ethics."

Then there's Bush. My fondest wish for his journey to Latin America was that he wouldn't further embarrass us as a nation. As usual, even that was too much to hope for. He's been greeted by throngs of protesters, repeatedly upstaged by Hugo Chavez (whose influence he hoped to counter), and openly called a tainted scourge of the innocent by Mayan holy men. And what is his tactic of choice? To deliver a stump speech filled with lies, apparently too dim-witted to understand that the press in other countries won't accept them as docilely as our own. But he's certainly managed to do the exact opposite of Bill Clinton-- fail completely. This sums it up nicely: Earlier this week, when U.S. cargo planes delivered $1.1 million in disaster relief to flooded areas in Bolivia, Chávez trumped the offer by contributing $15 million.

Back at home, however, the evil train keeps a' rollin', as House Republicans decided to install staunch anti-environmentalists to a special committe that will study global warming.

Finally, here's a lovely little piece from the Prospect on the poverty of the right-wing obsession with the 1960s. Which ended more than 30 years ago, of course. And it's been critical to the erosion of the two things they talk about most: the American family and moral values.

To be sure, the '60s, with its assaults on traditional authority, played some role in weakening the traditional family.

But its message was sounded loudest and clearest on elite college campuses, whose graduates were nonetheless the group most likely to have stable marriages. Then again, they were also the group most likely to have stable careers.

They enjoyed financial stability; they could plan for the future.

Such was not the case for working-class Americans. Over the past 35 years, the massive changes in the U.S. economy have largely condemned American workers to lives of economic insecurity. No longer can the worker count on a steady job for a single employer who provides a paycheck and health and retirement benefits, too.

So painfully obvious it hurts. Too bad John Edwards, the candidate most devoted to improving financial security for working-class Americans, is a hopelessly faggoty 'Breck Girl.'