"No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine." - - - William Blum

September 28, 2005

Doing a great many things is not the same as doing many great things.


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Next up: Bill Frist.

Let's see what the corruption-filled Democratic Party leadership has to say:

Today's news that House Republican Leader Tom DeLay has been indicted by a Texas grand jury for alleged participation in a criminal conspiracy to violate state laws banning corporate political contributions has predictably been greeted with righteous glee among Democrats and lurid accusations of a conspiracy among Republicans -- or at least those Republicans who are not already distancing themselves from the powerful and vengeful ex-exterminator from Sugarland.

It's now obvious why Democrats and even some Republicans fought DeLay's failed effort earlier this year to change Republican caucus rules to delete a longstanding requirement that its leaders step aside temporarily if indicted for serious crimes.

But tempting as it is to dwell on the possibility that this self-appointed moral arbiter of the nation could soon be strolling the halls not of Congress but of a Texas correctional facility, we urge Democrats to keep focused on a much bigger issue: the systemic pattern of corruption, cronyism, influence-peddling, and partisan intimidation in Washington. DeLay is clearly a major ink-spot in that pattern; even if he evades imprisonment on the Texas charges, let's remember that the object of the fundraising effort in question was The Hammer's obsessive campaign to launch a re-redistricting of U.S. House seats to buttress his power in the Capitol. And that broader determination to ruthlessly hold and use power by the GOP is what has given us a vast array of ethical lapses and bad policies, from Jack Abramoff's enormous roulette wheel of shakedowns and wirepullings, to a long series of fiscally ruinous special-interest raids on the U.S. Treasury, and even down to the staffing of FEMA with Republican campaign operatives.

Hypocrits. They're corrupt too, just not as much.

Of course corruption is the sister of politics. Always was, always will be. However, the blatant, unchecked and cornucopian amounts rampant in the Republican Party's leadership cannot survive in a republic, nor can a republic survive such an onslaught that we've witnessed since November, 2000. One has to give in to the other, and either our republic will survive as the Neocon cartel goes down in flames, or it will dissolve into fond memories as the Conservative Christian Fundamentalist Petroleum Military Media Coalition finally locks us down and throws away the key.

In spite of today's events, I'm afraid that the cell door is still closing. Revolution, anyone?

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