Atrios and Glenn Greenwald make a number of key connections in considering the upswing to our recent mid-term elections. As we said here Bu$hCo will say anything for political effect, regardless of the transparency of the lie.

It is true. They lie, and they lie about things which should cause revulsion in decent people. They lie and people die, and St. McCain and the Last Honest Man and the rest of the Wise Old Men of Washington somehow manage to make it out of bed each day. I don't know what's wrong with their brains, but they don't seem to work as they should.

Everything they accuse others of doing -- exploiting national security for domestic political gain, being 'unserious' about war matters, playing games with the mission of the troops -- is what they do as transparently as possible. And note how they used a senior military official to make the disgusting claim that the violence in Iraq was related to a desire to help Democrats win the midterm election: "A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq last week attributed the increase in violence at least partly to terrorists who want to influence the American vote."

The idea that the sectarian violence in Iraq, which has been spiraling out of control since the beginning of the year, had anything to do with trying to make Democrats win the election was always as transparently false -- stupid even -- as it was repugnant. Yet they say anything, and the media largely lets them get away with it.

Today’s NY Times:

In the deadliest sectarian attack in Baghdad since the American-led invasion, explosions from five powerful car bombs and a mortar shell tore through crowded intersections and marketplaces in the teeming Shiite district of Sadr City on Thursday afternoon, killing at least 144 people and wounding 206, the police said. . . .The attacks were the worst in an intensifying series of revenge killings in recent months, in a cycle that has increasingly paralyzed the political process and segregated the capital into Sunni and Shiite enclaves, and threatened to drag Iraq into an all-out civil war.

Not that we can expect the media to actually confront anyone from the Bu$h malAdministration over these blatant lies, but if they did, I expect the response would be something along the lines of “They obviously know so little about true Democracy that they thought the winners would be seated the day after the elections.”

Because today’s lies don’t really have to logically connect with yesterday’s lies.

But there probably was a connection, because the Democrats plan a long hard series of examinations of all the stupidity, carelessness, and pure bloodymindedness of Bu$hCo.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 — Seeking information about detention of terrorism suspects, abuse of detainees and government secrecy, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are reviving dozens of demands for classified documents that until now have been rebuffed or ignored by the Justice Department and other agencies.

“I expect real answers, or we’ll have testimony under oath until we get them,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, who will head the committee beginning in January, said in an interview this week. “We’re entitled to know these answers, and in many instances we don’t get them because people are hiding their mistakes. And that’s no excuse.”

Mr. Leahy, who has said little about his plans for the committee, expressed hope for greater cooperation from the Bush administration, which he described as having been “obsessively secretive.” His aides have identified more than 65 requests he has made to the Justice Department or other agencies in recent years that have been rejected or permitted to languish without reply.