Short Shots

At last, George Bush has his Monica.

Many crude remarks suggest themselves. I'm sure Bill Maher will make them.

The good news is, that with a Monica, Prosecutorgate has to lead to an impeachment.

Prosecutorgate sprang from 'an obscure,' 'little noticed,' virtually 'unknown' provision that was 'slipped into' the Patriot Act.

Does anyone but the lobbyists who write them, and the slippery attorney generals who use them, read the bills that the House and the Senate pass?

Obviously not our congresspersons and our senators. Nor anyone in the Washington press corps. That's because they have better things to do. They should publish a list of what those things are.

Has anyone noticed who 'slipped it in?'

Arlen Specter. Who used to be chairman of the judiciary committee. Who loves to pontificate about defending the constitution and no one being above the law.

His excuse is that his staff did it. Without telling him. What it is it, again, that lawmakers do in their jobs?

The last time that Alberto Gonzales was called before the judiciary committee to testify, Specter was the guy who insisted - insisted - that he not testify under oath.

Why does the media universally refer to the 'unpopular' war as if the war was just another reality show and the problem is that it's slipping in the ratings.

Would it make a difference if it was routinely referred to as the 'failed' war in Iraq. Or the 'fiasco,' 'monument to ineptitude,' 'the useless, murderous disaster,' 'the idiocy that makes Saddam Hussein look good in contrast,' 'the war based on lies that George Bush has already lost.'

Of course Thomas Hicks copped a plea.

If I were in Guantanamo, I'd plead to anything to get out.

For that matter, if I were in an American prison, I'd plead to most anything to get to an Australian one.

One of the precursors to the new found barbarity of the way the United States treats captives (those people with no category of humanity, neither POWs nor civilians) is the routine barbarity of US prison life. And with it the mental set that sees prisoners as non-people.

In order to win the War on Terror, we would first have to declare, and then win, the War on Stupidity.