Kangaroo Courts and Kangaroo Justices

With Tom DeLay's mugshot in competition against the media's favorite "Guilty Karl" shot of Rove in the race to be the DNC's Goldstein in the upcoming infomercial on CBS called "The Two Weeks Hate," we should all be concerned, Right and Left, about the state of the justice system in this country. [As an aside, that previous sentence will not be at all funny if you haven't read George Orwell's 1984] You know, it used to be that politicians in America were decent, genuine, honest, upstanding folks who abided by the law, did what was right, and made their mothers' proud. We should all remember such righteous politicians as New York county Democrat Party Chairman William March "Boss" Tweed, who embezzled from the City what would be, in today's Greenspan era no-inflation inflated money, around 2.9 billion dollars. Or what about the days when President Harding appointed the angelic Albert Fall to be Secretary of the Interior, and Fall proceeded to lease protected oil reserves to major oil magnates in exchange for incentive bonuses (I'm trying to be politically correct...I wanted to say "bribes" but it just came out kinda harsh). For those of you whose American history training is limited to public high school or university courses, what I just mentioned is known as the Teapot Dome Scandal. Anyway, history is replete with harrowing tales of political chivalry that cause the crimes of Tom DeLay and Karl Rove to whimper in their presence, but all of that is beside the point. DeLay is being prosecuted by a corrupt partisan. At the same time, DeLay no longer deserves to be Majority Leader of the House. The GOP is starting to act too much like the Democrats of old. It's time for some new blood. As for the Rove issue, according to the Washington Post, he has gotten a tongue lashing from President Bush--surely that's punishment enough.

Since the title of this post is "Kangaroo Courts and Kangaroo Justices" I guess I am obligated to say something about the abysmal nominee Harriet Miers and her latest travails in the most concocted effort of cronyism since, as Steve Chapman noted earlier this week, Harry Truman appointed his poker buddies to the court. The Bush administration has even resorted to releasing a document from 1989 when Miers publicly supported a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Somebody isn't thinking. Granted, President Bush has to get Conservatives back on his side, but he will not succeed in convincing all of them. At the same time, these sorts of stunts will only make Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy fired up to oppose Miers--I only hope they do.