Lost in Spaciness

"Earth to Alberto" was the call going out all over the land as the attorney general, upon hearing the Senate's deafening disapprobation, continued on his grinning, faith-based trek to eternal job security.

No doubt you caught some of Alberto's testimony last week -- if one can call at least 50 variations of "I don't recall" actual "testimony" -- in which he sat before seething members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and proceeded to demonstrate that even a full seven days of defense preparation against defenseless acts were, to no one's surprise, seven days of utter waste. Even in the mind-scrambling throes of cocaine withdrawal, Hermann Goering staged a more coherent defense at Nuremberg.

And no doubt you heard at least one senator of Alberto's own party -- Republican Tom Coburn -- suggest in no uncertain terms that he pack his bags and darken the halls of Justice no more.

And no doubt you've heard several other senators, including Judiciary Committee chairman Pat Leahy, demand not only the attorney general's resignation, but that he be replaced by someone acting as something other than the president's personal attorney.

And no doubt you've heard Senator Charles Schumer even suggest a list of possible candidates for Alberto's job, as though Alberto is already history.

And no doubt you heard the committee's ranking Republican, Senator Arlen Specter, humiliate Alberto like an angered schoolmaster just as the attorney general was beginning a fresh round of "misspeaking" before the Senate panel; and no doubt you've since heard the senator say that Alberto is, "no doubt, bad for the Justice Department."

Yet what did Alberto hear? How did he filter all of this? What directional political wind did he pick up with moistened finger?

He discerned, or rather his aides have discerned, that it was ... brace for this ... a "positive barometer."

True, that two-word gauge of the current political atmosphere was offered as inspired follow-up to Specter's lack of a specifically articulated demand that Alberto resign; nevertheless the comment revealed much more than that the attorney general and the administration for which he occasionally labors are simply out to lunch.

It showed, rather, that he and the administration simply don't give a damn. It showed that even when confronted by uniform evidence of incompetence prevailing -- but only when malfeasance is exhausted -- the White House is just going to smile and throw the mounting evidence back in Congress' bipartisan face.

If there was anything left to surprise, if there were any insults to the constitutional process left unspoken by this administration, that was it: that this White House, in its furtherance of dictatorial rule, doesn't even give a damn about its own party any longer; that even Republican denunciations of such wretched testimony will bring presidential endorsements of "increased confidence"; that this Republican administration, in short, intends to govern even without Republicans.

And that is what makes the title phrase of John Dean's Worse than Watergate finally ring so true in the last, fullest measure of just how autocratically corrupt this administration really is.

Comments

[Dr. Zorba]

Corrupt? Ha! You ain't seen nothin', yet.

Wait until next year when BushCo declares martial law and cancels the election.

These fascists will never release power.

[Mooser]

It's simply to late to switch horses, or whores, for that matter.
2008 will be the ultimate tsunami of Kool-Aid!
They Repubs can't change the facts, so they will spend the campaign telling us why the last eight years have been so good, and we should continue under the Repubs.
It's going to be something.
One significant monetary advantage will acrue to the Rethugs, however. They will not need to hire, and pay for, publicity agencies. The MSM will do that for free.