BULLETIN:  THE LEFT HAS FOUND A CAUSE – AT 9:39 P.M. ET:  I couldn't be more delighted.  The left has found a cause that keeps it occupied and out of the way.  What is this momentous crusade?  Give a read, from The Politico:

Liberals have found another reason to be angry with President Barack Obama: the exit of P.J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman who resigned Sunday just days after criticizing the Pentagon over its treatment of WikiLeaks suspect Pfc. Bradley Manning.

So the heavy issue in liberalism now is the State Department spokesman?   Quite a comedown from "Bush lied, thousands died."  Ah, for the good old days, and the big time.

Jane Hamsher, an Obama antagonist at the liberal blog FireDogLake — a site that perhaps epitomizes former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’s “professional left” epithet — is leading the charge. In a Monday post, she backed a march from the State Department to the White House to protest Manning’s alleged mistreatment and Crowley’s abrupt departure.

“With his firing of Crowley, Obama makes a mockery of his own claim to be a constitutional scholar who supports transparency in government,” she wrote.

Other commentators chimed in with disappointment and outrage at Obama’s careful statement on the matter at Friday’s news conference — and the subsequent resignation of a high-profile critic from within the administration.

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald compared Manning’s reported treatment with “the same detainee abuse against which [Obama] campaigned” and accused the president of “ongoing subservience to the military that he supposedly ‘commands.’ It is the way in which this Manning/Crowley behavior bolsters the regime of secrecy and the president’s obsessive attempts to destroy whistleblowing that makes this episode so important and so telling.”

COMMENT:  So Obama faces thunder from those citizens to the left of him – all 12 of them.  Look, this is good recreation for the left.  It's wholesome, doesn't involve controlled substances, and there are no come-hither women involved. 

Of course, what the left doesn't understand, and can never understand, is that public officials have responsibilities, not just rights.  Crowley violated his responsibilities, and was properly dispatched.  Starting a war with the Pentagon was not in his job description.

We should find other causes for the left, just to keep the true believers busy.  Like all children in a sandbox, they need supervision, and toys.

March 14, 2011