GOP Health Care Bill Denies Election Lessons

The Republican version of the House Health Care bill that Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) announced this past week, demonstrates that even with the trouncing the GOP has taken in the last two Congressional election cycles, the "Party of No" has learned nothing about the political will of the American people.

With its generous offerings to insurance and pharmaceutical companies, the Republican bill is the same kind of charade that they put forth under the previous administration. In exchange for transparent promises of feigned altruism from corporate special interests, GOP lawmakers continue to insist that this vital financial engine of their political base will make it better for everyone, if only we give them billions of taxpayer dollars. They did it in 2003, with an energy bill that gave tax breaks to oil, gas and electrical corporations, and the did it in 2003 with billions to pharmaceutical companies to bring down prescription drug prices to seniors.

Post Traumatic Bush Disorder

How John McCain was screwed twice by the 43rd President of the United States

The experts say that the condition known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) shows up three to seven years after a veteran's return from war. Five-and-a-half years since the beginning of the Iraq War, seven years since the abuses at Enron and the shock of September 11, could the stock market's crash last week and the country's humongous deficit be symptoms of a serious national psychiatric disorder, a dysfunction that happens to a country when its leaders choose to ignore the stress potential of our looming housing and credit crisis? In other words, my friends, our economy - and maybe our entire country - could be suffering from a collective case of PTSD.

We have already stopped listening to the words of calm the president and his minions offer up as as if it were a narcotic salve for our economy's ills. Wall Street itself has begged the administration to just shut the heck up. As the NY Daily News put it in an October 10 report:

"Just as he did on Monday and Tuesday - and three other times last week -Bush told the country he was on top of the growing crisis. Each time,the market tanked."

If the trauma inflicted by George W. Bush has had this kind of effect on us, pity poor John McCain. Bush's shortcut to the White House in 2000 ran right over him, before body checking Al Gore, and systematically dismantling the financial infrastructure of our country for the benefit of his cronies. Now the actions of the lame duck Bush administration have put their Haliburton supplied truck in reverse to run over him again. They must have something against him. I bet that's the way McCain feels.

What must it be like to be locked in a Viet Cong prison more than thirty years after you were physically released? This is an idea that came from one of my friends who does counseling: John McCain suffers from PTSD. Really, it would explain a lot about his legendary rages and his manipulability at the hands of his masters - I mean campaign staff.

Sarah Palin was just another emotional outburst for Johnny Mac. Now that the zealots her rhetoric has inflamed are talking about anger and violence, Senator McCain is doing a little anger management style calming, deflecting their rage as he has learned to deflect his own.

Back in May, 2008, when the McCain campaign released the candidate's medical records, it was only since 2000, and did not "speak directly to the [psychological] effects of his years as a prisoner of war," according to several articles published at the time.

But these accusations are not new to McCain. According to a May 2008 article on salon.com:

"During McCain's first White House run, his unsuccessful battle with George Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 1999 and 2000, he faced a whispering campaign from rivals that suggested his Vietnam ordeal had permanently damaged his psyche -- specifically, that his famed outbursts of temper might be a sign of something serious, like post-traumatic stress disorder."

While I do not subscribe to a "whispering campaign" tactic, especially one prosecuted by the likes of Karl Rove (whose 2000 "dirty tricks" may have actually contributed to McCain's current condition), there are questions that need to be answered.

It is hard to imagine what McCain's five-and-a-half years of deprivation, torture and broken bones in the Hanoi Hilton may have done to the senator's young mind. It is also hard to imagine that every time he tries to raise his damaged shoulders, he is not reminded of his time in captivity and his two suicide attempts.

The McCain campaign assured the Washington Post that their candidate "has never received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder," even though salon.com points out that "they failed to note that it would have been impossible for McCain to receive such a diagnosis -- since the term 'post-traumatic stress disorder' was not in use until seven years after McCain's release from captivity."

That is something left out of the Washington Post's pre-analysis of McCain's May release of medical records. They cite research from the Robert E. Mitchell Center for Prisoner of War Studies, which follows its mission, "to aid, comfort, and ease the repatriation of past and future prisoners of war by means of lessons learned from the evaluation of former prisoners of war." The Post story says that the Pensacola based the Navy research center found that Vietnam fliers were somehow different:

"The naval aviators who were imprisoned in Vietnam are in their 60s and 70s. Both now and in the years immediately after their release, they have seemed unusually resistant to psychological damage from the experience.

"The lifetime prevalence of PTSD in all the Pensacola POW studies [since World War II] is 24 percent. In the naval aviators, however, it was 4 percent from 1979 to 1983, when the disorder was most likely to appear."

They go on to say that the center has found an anomoly in officer POWs as a whole. "Research on World War II prisoners found that officers as a group had far less psychological trauma than enlisted men."

This exception may have been what Cindy McCain was referring to in a recent interview with Fox News reporter Marie Claire. In response to a question about her husband's POW related trauma, whether or not he had "night sweats," the senator's wife said, "The guys who had the trouble were the 18-year-olds who were drafted. He was trained, he went to the Naval Academy, he was a trained United States naval officer, and so he knew what he was doing."

Other researchers, however, have found that while PTSD may not be prevalent, they were able to "identify something called 'late-onset stress symptomatology' or LOSS, which came to light after 562 combat veterans -- about 300 of them POWs -- answered a long questionnaire. The syndrome involves the return of troubling memories late in life, along with emotional anguish and guilt, often triggered by retirement and friends' deaths."

A 2007 study by Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, and National Center for PTSD at Boston University describes LOSS as:

"a phenomenon observed in aging combat veterans who (a) were exposed to highly stressful combat events in their early adult years, (b) have functioned successfully throughout midlife with no history of chronic stress-related disorders, but (c) begin to register increased combat-related thoughts, feelings, and reminiscences commensurate with the changes and challenges of aging."

So is John McCain suffering from PTSD? It is difficult to say, however it is entirely possible that he has shown, is showing or will show signs that he is suffering from LOSS as he ages and encounters "the challenges of aging." Perhaps his scrapes with the politics and policies of George W. Bush present the Republican nominee wityh just such a challenge.

One can only hope that when we are a lifetime away from this presidency, that we are further along in our recovery than the soldiers who have been traumatized by the wars they fought when they were young.

-PBG

Words Taken Down

The Murky Puddle Left Behind When Terrible Truth
and Corrupted Consequence Collide

I was watching C-Span Tuesday and California Congressman Henry Waxman got up to speak on behalf of a resolution condemning the State Department's obstruction of the investigation of Iraqi government corruption. This malfeasance not only jeopardizes the future of the people of Iraq, but also presents extra risks and deadly challenges to the U.S. service personnel fighting and dying there.

In voicing his frustration with the Bush administration, Waxman drew an easy parallel between the corrupt intelligence the administration used to get us into this war, and the way the State Department has been stonewalling congressional inquiry by classifying publicly released reports retroactively and refusing to testify publicly about the allegations.

The rebuke passed overwhelmingly, by a vote of 395 to 21. But in his argument for the resolution, Waxman committed a congressional faux-pas. This is what he said:

"We must stop the pattern of dissembling and the misuse of
classified information. President Bush is now asking
taxpayers for an additional $150 billion to support the war
and to support Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. But he
is not being honest about the level of corruption in the
Maliki government."
(from the Congressional Record: October 16, 2007 (House)]
[Page H11576-H11586])

Instead of railing solely against the actions of the administration, he off-handedly referred to the administration as "he." Apparently, you can't say things like that during a congressional debate. No sooner had the words left his lips, then California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa jumped up.

"I ask that his words be taken down," he declared, "for
disparagement of the Bush administration."

"Words Taken Down" is an objection to words uttered in debate, according to House rules. A representative cannot say anything disparaging , of a personal nature, against the president or vice president. It's alright for David Letterman or Keith Olbermann to call Bush a liar on TV, but they can't do it on the floor of the House of Representatives. Freedom of Speech has rules, I guess, but since they didn't make "a law," it probably doesn't violate the First Amendment. Anyway, the rule says that if, after the clerk reads the passage in question back to the Chair, the words are indeed found to be objectionable, the representative who made the offending statement is disallowed from participating in debate for the rest of the day.

Waxman was forced to sit while the record was recounted, but before a determination was made, he declared that he misspoke, that indeed he intended to say "the Bush administration," and not "he." Indeed, if you check the Congressional Record, you will see ellipses where the "he" was originally spoken.

The Chair checked with Issa to see if that was okay with him, Issa said:

"I have no objection as long as the admonishment of the Chair
would be that, in fact, there is a caution as to disparaging
or appearing to disparage the office or the person of
the President or the Vice President under our rules."

The chair acknowledged the "caution" and Waxman was allowed to continue.

In watching that parliamentary bizzareness, I wondered if the Senate has the same rules. If they do, is it reciprocal? That is, when Cheney said to Senator Pat Leahy in June, 2004, on the floor of the Senate Chamber, "Fuck yourself," was he admonished? Probably not, but that could be for lots of reasons. Maybe the senate has no rule similar to "words taken down." Also, since the Veep's unfortunate remark happened during a photo shoot, and not during open debate, it's not part of the record. Still, what would the consequences be for the Vice President if that were the case? Since he hardly ever takes his presider's chair anyway, what good would it have done to make him sit for a day?

What is clear, and always has been, is that Cheney feels as free to fire insults at his political opponents as he is firing buckshot at his friends, all without fear of consequence. He feels that there are certain powers granted to the executive branch of government that allow it to remain aloof and in charge, privileged and, when necessary, impenetrable. It's all part of his grand plan to expand and consolidate the power of the presidency.

According to the new book Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, by Charlie Savage:

"[T]he vice president was...immersed...in an agenda he had been developing for thirty years.

"...He wanted to reduce the authority of Congress and the courts and to expand the ability of the commander in chief and his top advisers to govern with maximum flexibility and minimum oversight. He hoped to enlarge the zone of secrecy around the executive branch, to reduce the power of Congress to restrict presidential action...and to impose greater White House control over the permanent workings of government." (pp. 8-9)

It seems that ever since Congress imposed greater oversight on the presidency in reaction to the executive abuses of Watergate and the misleading way the war in Vietnam was sold to the American people, Cheney, himself an aide in the Nixon White House, has been talking about restoring the President's power. In 1996, according to Savage, Cheney said:

" 'Congress has begun to encroach upon the powers and the responsibilities of the President,' " and that he wants to, " 'go back and try to restore that balance.' " (p. 9)

It seems to me that the vice president must have some inner ear problems because the lack of balance is in his mind. The "encroaching" Congress gave this administration everything it asked for in the first six years. If Dick Cheney wanted this administration to be an example of what the presidency should be, what powers it should have, then he has left a sad and broken legacy that Congress once again will have to fix. They won't be able to fix it now. Some of the most important reforms that Cheney regrets took place with a Democratic Congress and a Democrat in the White House. This Congress is hampered by not having a clear enough majority, a veto-proof majority - not that it should be an excuse for disappointing congressional capitulation we have seen this year.

I have heard that there are many who are vying for the presidency in 2008 - in both parties - who relish the idea of expanded power, but I urge all of the candidates to keep this in mind: you may become the President of the United States, but this is still a representative government, and if Congress can remain true to its constituency, then their word is the will of the people. "Thy will be done" is a humble obeisance to a god, not a license to a leader to indulge a personal agenda.

PBG

Back Rooms and Back Doors: The N.Y. Times Torture Story

Rationalizing the Secrets that Define a Presidency
and 'Shock the Conscience' of a Country

Continuing to leave the gashes of my once great country bleeding and unchecked has left a festering wound on the future of our nation. The long-fingered fist of war has crushed thought and trust in this country, and too few have recognized the need for social action against a government that in brazen secrecy "shocks the conscience" of its people.

In 1953, the Supreme Court threw out the evidence, in Rochin v. California, against Richard Rochin and his appeal of a conviction for morphine possession. It seems the cops took him to the hospital and induced vomiting in order to obtain the evidence. The Court said that using evidence obtained in this manner "shocks the conscience" of a society's "decencies of civilized conduct." The "shocks the conscience" test is often applied to cases where there is a question as to whether evidence is admissible or actions permissible under the law.

When the McCain Anti-Torture Bill went through congress in late 2005, there was talk about including the "shocks the conscience" text to the bill, but it never made it. Instead, it was added as part of the record through a maneuver called a colloquy by Georgia Congressman Jim Marshall.

But even the congressman was pessimistic about its application to this bill. In an op-ed piece in the Macon Telegraph, dated December 24, 2005, he said:

"No, 'shocks the conscience' is not the bright line test we would all prefer. One is not possible here as in so many other conflicts between societal need and individual rights. Ultimately appropriate treatment of our prisoners and detainees requires judgment, control and leadership in many different circumstances."

The New York Times today reports that regardless of Congress' anti-torture legislation, regardless of what the Supreme Court said in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Justice Department has issued secret memorandum after secret memorandum to the CIA telling it that its methods are OK:

"[In 2005], as Congress moved toward outlawing 'cruel, inhuman and degrading' treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard."

"Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations,"
S. Shane, D. Johnston and J. Risen,
New York Times, October 4, 2007

If signing statements weren't enough, secret memos redefining the reach and permit of the Executive Branch beyond the law are enough to wonder just which of us our government will go after next. They have created an environment where they are no longer bound by Constitution or law. Naomi Wolf, former editor of The Nation, has written a fascinating book documenting the abuse and abandonment of America's commitment to the rights and ethical treatments of her citizens. In the book, called The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Wolf asserts her belief that fascism is already upon us, that it is only a matter of time before a journalist (or a blogger) is declared an enemy combatant, and after that, there is no turning back.

"The Bush administration has started to use the notion of treason in its Stalinist sense," she says on page 133, "as a weapon designed to harass critics and to frighten opposition leaders."

Blaming the Messenger

Indeed, on CNN's Situation Room tonight, Fran Townsend, the White House Homeland Security Adviser, railed against the published reports, saying, "it is incredibly irresponsible to leak classified information that threatens our national security and the effectiveness of the techniques we do have at our disposal." She implied that the New York Times was to blame for the disclosures of Republicans who actually have a conscience.

Our only salvation is that our national legacy of an open, honest and free society is (for the time being) stronger than the blind loyalty of a few corrupt men who, despite all decency, rationalize their movements in the shadows.

Call to Action

The call to action is once more laid at Congress' door. I'm sorry, Senator Leahy, but the time for civil discourse, of waiting for the White House to deliver documents so that you can come to an "understanding" about what they are doing is long past. The House and Senate Judiciary Committees must file contempt charges against the AG's office and the White House for circumventing the law signed by Bush in December 2005 that said that the US does not torture.

Even now the Executive denies it, using the euphemism "harsh techniques" when they mean "torture." The secret memos, you see, said that despite the law, what the CIA was told it could do was not a violation of the law, even though the law was passed months after the memoranda were written.

We can either stand up to yet another illegal abuse of power, or let our freedoms be swallowed by it. Frankly, I think prison is too good for them. They should not only be thrown out of office, but out of the country as well - them, their children and their grandchildren. Otherwise, they will continue to be the kind of god-driven, self-righteous, greedy, militant opposition that we all dread.

-PBG

A Sabbatical for War

Letting the Killing Fields Lie Fallow
After the Autumn Harvest

So the seeds sown in the spring surge have been cut, and baled in flag covered coffins. The noble Petraeus, in the regalia of an honored soldier, and the honorable Crocker, intent hidden behind the skirts of his diplomat's robes, pay homage to the lords of state who put up the treasure of the people that they may do the king's bidding and return in glory and praise.

They bring gifts to the lords of the House and the stone walls of the Senate, those same bales of bodies of the honorable and the innocent, piled against the mark on a marble column etched MMI. They bow low as they present the lords with the grisly gift. "My lords, I bring you the promise of military progress," says the noble Petraeus, eyes still on his shoe tops. But from the bench, the chair merely clears his throat.

"This," says the chair as he glances at his fellow legislators, "this is what he calls progress?" The disappointed dais shakes its collective head.

"But my lords," says Petraeus, edging his eyes up from his still bent head, "You cannot call this anything but a good sign. The enemy is at least partially, somewhat subdued. See how our divine guidance has enabled us to shrink his harvest! Why, by next summer, we will even be able to give him fewer seeds to sow."

"Correct me if I am wrong, Petraeus," responds the chair, "but aren't you the one who recommended giving the enemies of our republic the extra seed with which to sow their killing fields, those self-same seeds that you now say you will soon rescue from the scythe of our country's foes?"

Petraeus shuffled his feet together and examined his chest of medals. "I never said it would be easy," he offered meekly. "I am merely a soldier in service to my king."

At this point, the court jester and her friends began their taunts in an allegro chorus:

"Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah.
You brought the seeds.
You brought the knife.
You dared the enemies to take more life.



"Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.
You say in Anbar
The enemy scurries,
But here you bring us our children to bury!


Owww. Owww. Oww. Owww."

Showing bemusement, the chair calls for the jesters to leave, lest he reveal his amusement with their song and incur the wrath of the king. "Get them out," he shouts, and when they are gone, turns to the ambassador. "Do you see the clamor of the people, Mr. Crocker? Surely you can guarantee them that all this blood and treasure is worth the cost."

"Well, it is worth it to those our deaths and money protect," says Crocker proudly. "But," he adds, "I cannot guarantee victory."

"Then woe to our country and God bless our people and its vacuous leadership," concludes the chair. "Woe to us all."

And in the hallways, someone is singing, "Woe. Woe. Woe. Woe."

-------------------

So goes the conversation after six years of conflict, six years of sowing the killing fields with dedicated, patriotic men and women for our enemies to harvest "over there so they don't kill us over here."

Rare is the harvest that cuts down life to no purpose.

For whose consumption do our brothers and sisters bleed and die? For us or for our enemies?

If it is for me that they die, as we start the seventh year of the conflict of a generation, let's give the war a sabbatical. I wish that by next September 11, we allow the killing fields to lie fallow, to sow no more seeds, that we may allow honor to recover. Then, after another year, we can plant the seeds of peace, that we can all eat of its fruit and restore the devalued soul of our great nation.

-PBG

Presidents and Irrelevance

How quickly do the blustery storms of windy bravado become the squawks of a cold little man in the last throws of leadership!

Below thirty is not only chilly on a Fahrenheit thermometer. It's also a frosty place to be in an opinion poll, and that's where the President of the United States finds himself these days. The White House this weekend dismissed Jimmy Carter's opinion of the present administration's foreign policy as the "worst in history" by arguing that the former president and recent Nobel laureate is becoming "increasingly irrelevant." The question is, with Bush's numbers in the deep freeze, just who's opinion exactly is "irrelevant?"

The world stopped listening to George W. Bush four years ago when he launched an unprovoked, negligibly supported war in Iraq. Despite what the media called a "mandate" following the close 2004 elections, the confetti at the inauguration had not even stopped falling when the President's numbers began their slide. After getting us into an endless war and showing blind support for Michael Brown after Hurricane Katrina, does anyone really care about his opinion about what the Lebanese are doing to the Palestinian refugee camps, or whether or not he is confident of Alberto Gonzales?

We have a low opinion of the President because, like the drug addict he once was, he has shown horrible judgement. If he has poor judgement, his assessment of any situation (other than, perhaps, what his Scottish Terriers' poop smells like) is completely without weight or merit.

For some presidents, strong presidents, honorable presidents, opinions can be easily converted to calls to action. Recommendations are considered, coherent arguments are made, and a good government functions. But a president with a track record of mismanagement on - literally - a global scale, is weak and has no honor, and deserves (arguably) only the honorific of his office as a modicum of respect. He is not just a lame duck. He's just lame.

The problem is, if one day he realizes the level of his impotence, and graciously removes himself from office, we may no longer have a screaming Lilliputian on our shoulder, but we will still have to deal with the Cheney in our shoe.

But the high office of leadership is bigger than one man. Each of the three branches of government strives for the permanence of its opinions, and each wields a pen to imbed those ideas into the foundation of our government and the fabric of our society. I hope one of them has the wisdom to build the necessary consensus that will help us recover from this time of the worst US government in history.

Power Failure

Last Power Standing

Rockets and bombs, tank tracks and bullets, leave blood-soaked boots standing burnt and empty. In the flash of mortar fire, a fallen, legless marine loses his hold on purpose, and lets his life go, seeping, into the sand. "I will not be the last to die," his mind says when he finally releases. "I will not be the last."

Meanwhile, a half a planet away, the Superpower says that more are needed. More must go. More will die. They see honor in turning cannon fodder into heroes. They are doing them a favor. It's a slam-dunk.

The war goes on. The bullets cost money. The money is borrowed. I will not be the last to pay. I will not be the last. We were not asked if we wanted to pay for this war, this failure. To finance a war, we are usually asked to sacrifice. That's why in World War Two everyone had a chance to be a hero, whether you held a rifle or a rivet gun, because everyone sacrificed. So this is not stopping Hitler. This is a slam dunk, a walk in the park. It's Grenada. It's bombing Libya. Only it's not.

They want us to think this is a different kind of war. It is not, except that with this one, each death does not lead us closer to victory. These soldier's sacrifices just disappear into invisible coffins, hidden under the tainted banner of a country led by stubborn and greedy fools.

Even now, NOW, that two-thirds of the country thinks this hole thing is a colossal mistake, that we are tired of young people dying and killing for a mistake in which none of us want to share, even when the administration's integrity is smaller than the debris in a super-collider, they are still afraid to let us see and honor the soldiers' coffins. What do they have to lose by giving us at least that?

Children who have yet to be born will be paying for this war, and not just with money. Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld didn't just send the military to war; they sent our country to war, all of us. When we finally turn off the lights on this thing, we will limp home, a weak and wounded nation. In less than ten years, the enemy we are so hot to destroy will have more political clout than we do now, and all the money will be in Russia and China.

We may have won the Cold War, but somehow, in the smoke of the World Trade Center we got turned around and did a face-plant into the hottest war in modern history.

It's time to learn that we don't have to be the biggest or the strongest or the richest country. That is not what makes us the best. It's the simple, human things that make us great, like a sense of community, a drive toward tolerance and equal opportunity, and a work ethic that revolves around creative solutions. It's all of those things coming together that make this country one of the best. Those are the reasons people still come here from all corners of the planet, even from our own backyard.

I don't care if we are powerful. I just want us to be good.

-PBG

A Hole in the Ice: Lessons from a Flailing Dog's Persistence

The conviction of Scooter Libby is just another crack in the ice. Though bold in its freshness, there is a danger that its impact will eventually be lost in the spiderweb of damage that has broken the thinly veiled surface of lies of this corrupt administration. The maze we have to untangle is mind boggling, and they like it that way.

Today we are challenged to break the ice apart before the cracks re-freeze and bury the clear waters of truth beneath a scarred legacy that will leave us forever weakened. We must keep throwing stones at the flat wall of ice until they skip across truth's transparent surface.

Like the dog that was rescued from the frozen lake in Colorado recently, Tuesday's determined flailing-for-truth punched a big hole that we must persistently hit to keep open. The dog's name was Pearl. The dogs in our fight yesterday were the Federal Jury that convicted Scooter and the US Senate Judiciary Committee that is investigating the unusual firings of five US attorneys following the elections last year.

For the Libby jury, the biggest break in the ice may have come after the conviction, when juror Denis Collins told the press, "It was said a number of times, 'What are we doing with this guy here? Where's Rove? Where are the other guys?' "

This pointed question turned the public's finger right back around to the White House. Its semi-rhetorical tone managed to turn the administration's "fall guy" into just a symptom of criminal corruption that the jury publicly acknowledged it believes goes much higher.

For the five former US attorneys in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the ice was broken because, in part, of a small hole created by an unnamed Justice Department official who emailed one of the attorneys, warning them that the DOJ would "pull their gloves off and offer public criticisms" of the fired attorneys if they spoke publicly about their suspicious firings. One of the attorneys called it "a shot across the bow."

While the Attorney General's folks deny that any were fired for anything except cause, all five received glowing evaluations in the weeks preceding their firings. One was fired to make room for a Karl Rove employee. Carol Lam, the US attorney in San Diego, was fired after her rigorous pursuit of the Randy "Duke" Cunningham corruption case, even though she was told when she was appointed, in the wake of Enron, to pursue white collar criminals.

Another attorney, David Iglesias of New Mexico, was fired after refusing to release sealed indictments against Democrats before last year's congressional election. He testified that when he told Sen. Pete Domenici that he wouldn't file the indictments before the election, the senator told him, "Sorry to hear that," and hung up.

So now it's time to get those ice picks, stones and bricks and whack away at a shattered ice pack of lies until we see truth again. Then, like Pearl the dog, we must get in the ice and flail, because in this, the people are the police, and though we may undo the damage of some megalomaniacal Republicans, we must be vigilant, lest the pendulum of corruption swing too easily the other way, and we end up switching red ice for blue.

-PBG