Happy Dance Part II

Apparently I was just getting ahead of myself when I first said last week that Tom DeLay was indicted for money-laundering. In fact, last week he was indicted for criminal conspiracy. This week, on the other hand, he was indicted for money laundering. That's actually a more serious charge, carrying with it the possibility of a life sentence. A life sentence!

Be still, my beating heart!

I have to wonder how long this run of good luck will last, what with the arrests and/or investigations continuing apace, from DeLay to Abramoff to Safavian to Frist to Ney to Cunningham to Rove and Libby and even possibly up the ladder to Chimpy McAWOL and Vice Preznit Go-Cheney-Yourself himself. What is it that happens when a Republican administration stays in office for two terms? Nixon resigned in disgrace, before he could be impeached. Reagan's entire staff and Cabinet and his basement NSA were practically all under investigation and/or indictment by the end of his second term. You'd have to go all the way back to Eisenhower -- who, with his comments warning about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex," his disdain for preemptive warfare and his utilization of the National Guard to defend civil rights in the South would qualify as an ultra-liberal in today's skewed-far-right political climate -- to find a two-term Republican administration that didn't end its second term under a dark legal cloud. Is it just that power itself is so corrupting, and what with the unprecedented power in the hands of the current crop of Republicans, has corrupted absolutely? Or is it something more inherent in the Republican philosophy of today, with its greed-is-good, corporations-are-king mindset that has sent so many right-wing politicos over the ethical edge?

You really have to wonder. In Nixon's day, one of the biggest reasons he resigned was because he knew -- and the whole country knew -- that he could not count on members of his own party to vote against his impeachment once the facts of Watergate came to light. The same cannot be said of today's House and Senate members. Even if it's proven that their Boy Bush was directly involved in the Plame outing -- which is looking increasingly likely -- even with all the gathered and gathering evidence that he lied us into an unnecessary, illegal and immoral war -- which ought to be an impeachable offense all by itself -- even with dozens of other lesser charges and shady actions and corruption and cronyism and incompetence surrounding him and his administration, you just know that the Congress as it's currently made up would not vote to impeach him. They just won't, no matter what. (Which is why it's imperative that we wrest control of Congress from the forces of darkness; and why it's even more vital that the Democrats begin to work on their spinal and testicular growth between now and the 2006 elections.)

Maybe one of the reasons Harriet Miers was nominated for the Supreme Court is that Spurious George thinks he may need some friends high up in the judiciary sometime in the next couple years, and who better than a woman who obviously worships him and has said that he is "the most brilliant man I ever met"? Yeesh.

Regardless of how it all shakes out -- and you can bet it will be some time in the shaking -- today is a happy day here at the Generik Brand. Tom Delay is going down, George Bush is going down, all of them are going down, and I'm dancing and snapping my fingers. Join me in a celebratory cocktail?