Three items of interest regarding powerful Republicans. Two of them suggest a party that's headed for a major fall, the third makes it clear that the fallout from the current administration will be felt for a long time to come.
1. Porter Goss resigns.
As of my last perusal of CNN's website (about a half hour ago...then I got distracted looking for photos of actress Debbie Rochon...but never mind), we still don't know exactly why Goss abruptly resigned from his cushy gig as head of the CIA. Press coverage has rather blandly pointed out that Goss' tenure has been "marked by controversy"--but what member of Team Bush hasn't had drama? Bush will stand by people he's appointed no matter what kind of crazy shit they've pulled, so for a thing like this to just happen out of the blue...Something's up. Is there a dead hooker involved?
2. The hundred dollar misunderstanding.
A very interesting story in yesterday's New York Times detailing the genesis and collapse of the Senate Republicans' scheme to give taxpayers a hundred bucks apiece to make everyone forget about high gas prices. Since the idea was met by either ridicule or outright hostility, our elected leaders just sort of let it die on the vine.
My favorite part of the story are the comments from Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum. Even though he was one of eight senators crowing about this thing when it was first proposed, he's now skulking about in the darkness, claiming he knew relatively little about it ahead of time. "It came out of the leader's office," he said.
Hey, we all do stupid things, but these guys can't even step up and admit they did something stupid. It was someone else's fault, um, we can't talk about that, um...We're boldly going forward with an energy initiative that will...ah, well...oh yeah, it's all the Democrat's fault!
What a bunch of douchebags.
3. America--fun while it lasted.
The Boston Globe reported recently that Our Exalted Leader Bush has issued over 750 "presidential signing statements." Like many terrible things, signing statements are a legacy of the Reagan years, a scheme that basically lets a president ignore new laws as they're passed.
So we have now a president who repeatedly signs legislation into law and at the same time declares his intent to ignore that very law. A president who literally considers himself above the law. A president clearly willing to shred the Constitution and scatter the remnants to the four winds.
But this isn't a president. Presidents don't grant themselves absolute power. Emperors do that, and dictators. We elect people to congress to keep the president's powers in check. When he declares he is not bound by acts of congress, he is essentially saying our will has ceased to matter. He has declared himself king.
This is a very dark time for our country. So dark it seems we may never again see daylight.
