Sometimes we have to listen to the righties, especially when they take the new memes out for a test spin.

Earlier today, I caught a CSPAN rebroadcast of last week's Judiciary Committee hearings on the FISA rewrite, also known as the RESTORE act, which I am sure you are very anxious to read for yourselves before offering kneejerk condemnation. Naturally, the Republicans on the Committee excoriated RESTORE as a cave-in to Osama Bin Laden. Naturally, the progressive purists will excoriate RESTORE as a cave-in to George Bush. And so it goes.

Several Republicans offered their own amendments designed to gut the law and allow W to do whatever the hell he wants. One such offering came from my new unfavorite Congress-critter, Louie Gohmert. (He prefers Louie to Louis.) He's the Representative from the First Congressional District in Texas -- a district that traditionally went Democratic until the recent redistricting shennanigans.

Even Michael Savage seems sane compared to this guy. How weird is Gohmert? Well, I couldn't find a transcript, so you're going to have to trust my memory on this. But he began his speech by blaming the Iraq war on two main culprits: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

I'm not kidding.

Carter, y'see, eviscerated the intel community. That's why we were caught unawares on 911. Not only that: Carter's dastardly deed helped lead Bill Clinton to the false belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. And that's why we're in our present mess: W invaded Iraq based on bad data he got from Bill Clinton.

Never mind the fact that the neocons had set up the Office of Special Plans within the Pentagon to override the more sober WMD assessments being delivered by the CIA. Never mind the faked Niger docs. Never mind the aluminum tube chicanery. Never mind any of that. Blame Carter. Blame Clinton.

Gohmert cannot possibly believe this crap -- can he?