Over at Voxiversity, take the quiz and see how much you really know about Mussolini.

Ignorance is strength. And firing an Inspector General who was exposing the corruption of your good bud is an “act of political courage.”

Ah, the audacity of audacity.

It’s starting to look that way:

In a detailed conversation Wednesday morning, Walpin said the White House is “grasping at nonexistent straws” to justify his termination as watchdog for one of the Obama White House’s favorite federal programs.

Walpin described an atmosphere in which his investigations into fraudulent and inefficient use of federal dollars were often the cause of conflict with the board and top management of the Corporation. “The fact that the board doesn’t like what I was doing in order to perform my duties as an IG is not a reason for removing me,” Walpin said. “In fact, the more diligent an IG is in reporting criticisms of the board and the running of the corporation, the more the board doesn’t want the IG there. But that’s exactly why the IG position was created.”

In this case, the board and top management were unhappy with Walpin’s aggressive investigation of the misuse of federal AmeriCorps funds by Sacramento, California mayor — and prominent Obama supporter — Kevin Johnson. The board was also unhappy with Walpin’s probe into the waste of AmeriCorps money at the City University of New York.

If it were a Republican president (and especially George Bush) who had fired an IG with no apparent cause because he was getting too close to a buddy, the New York Times would be pounding its spoon on its high dudgeon on a daily basis. But this is just hope. And change.

[Update a couple minutes later]

More from Moe Lane:

As Ed Morrissey noted, believing that this was the White House’s primary motive requires that you believe that the administration’s instinctive, immediate reaction to seeing an employee come down with a debilitating disease is to fire them. Yes. That is precisely the thing that one does when one wishes to maintain a reputation for empathy and tolerance. I can’t say that I have as much difficulty as Michelle Malkin reconciling the allegation of Walpin’s mental diminished capacity with his public appearances (see the video above), mostly because neither I nor Ms. Malkin can take it at all seriously…

First you fire him, then you try to smear him. It’s right out of the old Clinton playbook. I wonder if Rahm is calling the shots here? I guess that he should be thankful that, unlike Travelgate, they didn’t get the FBI to trump up some charges and try him.

Yet.

[Update mid afternoon]

He’s not taking it lying down:

“I am now the target of the most powerful man in this country, with an army of aides whose major responsibility today seems to be to attack me and get rid of me,” Walpin said.

Facing bipartisan criticism for the firing, Obama sought to allay congressional concerns with a letter to Senate leaders Tuesday evening explaining his decision. In the letter, White House Special Counsel Norman Eisen wrote that Walpin was “confused” and “disoriented” at a May board meeting, was “unduly disruptive,” and exhibited a “lack of candor” in providing information to decision makers.

“That’s a total lie,” Walpin said of the latter charge. And he said the accusation that he was dazed and confused at one meeting out of many was not only false, but poor rationale for his ouster.

“It appears to suggest that I was removed because I was disabled — based on one occasion out of hundreds,” he said.

“I would never say President Obama doesn’t have the capacity to continue to serve because of his (statement) that there are 56 states,” Walpin said, adding that the same holds for Vice President Biden and his “many express confusions that have been highlighted by the media.” Obama mistakenly said once on the campaign trail that he had traveled to 57 states.

I hope he sues.

[Thursday morning update]

Gee, this is starting to sorta look like a pattern:

…no fewer than three IG’s have recently been fired, all while investigating so-called sensitive issues.

A Chicago politician covering up corruption? Who could have imagined such a thing?

[Bumped]

The fear and unending two-minute hate against Sarah Palin (and Republican women in general) is a wonder to behold.

He’s a right winger. But he’s not as bad as Sarah Palin, because at least he likes to spread the wealth around, like the president.

It’s astounding (or should be) that Yglesias actually gets paid for such lunacy.

[Update a couple minutes later]

This seems relevant, somehow: the left’s romance with Islamism.

[Another quick update]

Obama and the media misinterpret the Middle Eastern elections:

Thomas Friedman at the New York Times quoted Paul Salem, the starry-eyed analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “People in this region have become so jaded,” Salem explained. “And then here came this man [Obama], who came to them with respect, speaking these deep values about their identity and dignity … and this person indicated that this little prison that people are living in here was not the whole world. That change was possible.”

These misperceptions about Lebanon recall an old Arab proverb: “When shooting an arrow of truth, dip its point in honey.” Leg-tingling about the president aside, Hezbollah lost the election in Lebanon for several reasons; chief not among them was Obama’s amoral speechifying in Egypt.

But the leg tingling continues.

[Wednesday morning update]

More thoughts from Lileks:

Note how “cultural conservative” becomes conceptually elongated, so “right-wingers” who may, for example, not wish to redefine marriage become bunkmates with someone who denies the existence of homosexuals, and whose regime hangs them from lampposts. Well, we know the right-wingers here would, if they could, right? It’s only the possibility of bad PR that keeps Dick Cheney from setting his daughter on fire. As for demagogic nationalism, one suspects that Yglesias finds demagogy in anyone who talks about love of country and the great things America has done without landing with both feet on a big wet BUT, and then goes on read the syllabus from a Howard Zinn course.

I didn’t love America any less in the Clinton years than I did in the Bush years, or vice versa; I don’t conflate my opinions about transitory leaders with my opinion about the nation’s role in history and its exceptional, if occasionally improvised, conflicted, and compromised struggle to do the right thing. I mean, go back in history and find another one of us. (Note: small ethnically coherent Nordic states that can’t project power six feet over the border really don’t count.) But unqualified love of country unnerves some people, as though the lack of qualifications means you don’t recognize qualifying factors. Me, I think they’re obvious; we’re made of humans, after all, and every house we build has beams of crooked timber. But I don’t recall a lot of FDR speeches laying out a litany of American sins in order to bolster the case for why America should fight Hitler, despite all those troubling similarities. After all, we lynched Jews, too, ergo we must face our own demons as well as those abroad. And so on.

It’s interesting how he mentions Ahmadinejad’s demogogy, his “language of class resentment, painting his more pragmatic and reformist opponents as decadent elites out of touch with ordinary people,” and his populist use of oil revenues, and Sarah Palin comes to mind instead of Chavez – who, after all, called Ahamdi to tender a warm congrats. I swear, it’s the heels. They just make some men feel so small. In any case, when she gives a speech at the UN and later describes how she felt herself enveloped in a godly glow, give me a call.

It’s interesting that when it comes to fascism and communism, leftists can see only the difference, but when it comes to “conservatives,” they can see only similarities (and often imagined similarities).

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

Yglesias has a tingle up his leg: “Ahmadinejad has a pretty sweet hipster style.”