[rabscuttle385]

Pr Bush, however, has demonstrated his own admirable character on multiple occasions; especially when “no-one was looking”.

I'll give you that.

Bush--and Cheney--are a far classier act than the administrations preceding or subsequent to theirs.

However, that does not excuse the reality that they--and the Republican Congress--squandered several years of immense political capital and opportunity to finally accomplish a properly small government conservative agenda (as sickoflibs pointed out at # 51) and, even worse, started imitating the Democrats (!!!) by enlarging the size and scope of the Federal Government.

[OneWingedShark]

3 big missed opportunities for Congress & Executive:

1 - Introducing bills to illegalize our legal infanticide.
2 - Sealing the borders with aggressive military force... border-protection-patrols could be integrated into the deployment/redeployment cycle... also giving a “cool down” from the hot war-zone to the warm border-zone before coming all the way back into the cold-zone of “civilized society).
3 - Bailing out the airlines after 9/11... we should have let the free market (and small business) take care of the problem.

and, bonus #4:

4 - The assenting Justices of the 25Jun05 USSC case could have been expelled for their rendering of “Immanent Domain” to mean that the government can perpetrate theft and larceny. IE they were guilty of being accomplices to theft/larceny under both color of law & color of office.