State of the Union

FEMA, cronyism, incompetence, and Katrina. Contrast with FEMA's on-the-ball proactiveness regarding the 2004 Florida hurricanes -- i.e. hurricanes that hit a swing state a few months before the presidential elections. But that makes sense -- dealing with disasters is a state and local responsibility, while winning elections is a federal responsibility.

Miers, cronyism, incompetence, and the Supreme Court. I remain undecided whether it is worse to infect the Court with Harriet "George Bush is the most brilliant man I've ever met" Miers or a clone of Robert "I don't understand all the amendments" Bork. Presumably we will in the coming decades have all kinds of leisure to plumb the depths of one of these misfortunes.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay indicted for illegal campaign fund money laundering, after being rebuked by his own ethics committee multiple times for ethics lapses. I'm certain it's all a big conspiracy.

Bill Frist about to be indicted for insider trading. But I'm sure this won't stop him from running for president.

All of Mobster Jack Abramoff's cronies facing down the barrel of his little proclivities -- like taking out hits on former business associates -- becoming public. (Man, doesn't the criminalization of politics really, really suck? At least if it's your own guys?)

Speaking of things being different in 2004 than 2005, just how many orange alerts happened in the six months before, versus six months following, the election? We don't, of course, play politics with the department of Homeland Security. It was just that the orange alerts followed legitimate security threats -- i.e. Kerry rising in the polls.

Iraq. 1992 dead as of this week. I'm sure someday we'll all look back at that number and laugh. Grimly.

Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. But we all know torture is okay. They do it on NYPD Blue and Alias. Rights are for wimps. All the libertarians who support Bush say so.

Tora Bora. In December there's a book finally coming out where the CIA gives rather more definitive news that they all knew where bin Laden was. But our "see if Saddam was involved" president didn't care -- and catching bin Laden would have been very bad for Bush.

Deficits don't matter, according to the vice president. They ran on this platform. Massive spending boondoggles and massive unoffset tax cuts are okay, if you're a Republican.

I'm sure I've missed some. The economy sucks, wealth is concentrating at the top, the environment is being trashed, worker protections are being eroded, the rest of the world despises us.

But the big one, at the moment, is the Fitzgerald investigation into the Plame/Brewster-Jennings outing, the Niger forgeries, and the whole lying-to-congress, lying-to-America runup to the war, which next week may take down Libby or Rove. (There is even scuttlebutt it could indict the vice president -- but that doesn't seem so likely.)

The Administration's plan for dealing with all this? They've been hinting that there's a tail in Syria whose dog is about to wag. But unlike when Clinton attacked bin Laden in 1998, in retaliation for actual terrorist attacks, the White House isn't trying to cover up a blowjob, so it's okay.

Unless, of course, there's someone sharing more with Jeff Gannon than we know.

That, see, would be a scandal.

Oh, and by the way...

I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation were not a waste of time and dollars.

- Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Meet the Press, today

Can someone please point the following out to a Republican on camera?

"On August 17, 1998, William Jefferson Clinton swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth before a Federal grand jury of the United States. Contrary to that oath, William Jefferson Clinton willfully provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony to the grand jury concerning one or more of the following: (1) the nature and details of his relationship with a subordinate Government employee; (2) prior perjurious, false and misleading testimony he gave in a Federal civil rights ac tion brought against him; (3) prior false and misleading statements he allowed his attorney to make to a Federal judge in that civil rights action; and (4) his corrupt efforts to influence the testimony of witnesses and to impede the discovery of evidence in that civil rights action."

- Article 1 of the Impeachment of President Clinton

Rule of law. Rule of law. Rule of law.

And the first law is, IOKIYAR.