And After Everyone is in Jail, Then What?

The New York Times reports this morning that Congressman Peter T. King, (R-NY) is outraged that the NYT divulged US government surveillance of confidential banking records. King said on Fox News on Sunday "I'm calling on the attorney general to begin a criminal investigation and prosecution of The New York Times, its reporters, the editors that worked on this and the publisher." King later explained in a telephone interview why he hadn’t mentioned the LA Times and The Wall Street Journal, which had also written about the surveillance of banking records. It was because “The Times is more of a recidivist”, King said. That is, the NYT had published an article last year about NSA wiretapping. Senator Arlen Specter says the White House and Congress are this-close to reaching a resolution and to submitting the NSA wiretap program to judicial review. Most people on the Democrat side of things want to see Karl Rove in jail immediately. Soon to be followed by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney being frog-marched to the nearest pokey. Libby, Abramoff, DeLay and assorted other politicians already are being fitted for orange jump-suits. The Republicans want to put those who disagree with the Bush administration in jail. The Democrats want to put those who disagree with the Bush administration in political office and the whole Bush administration in jail. Is jail a deterrent for anyone? No. Even career criminals believe they can beat the rap. And certainly, the criminals in our three branches of government believe they can beat any rap. The biggest problem we have right now is that the folks who vote would rather vote for criminals than for honest people. Sociologists could probably explain why…I certainly can’t. But we will have decent people in government and we will have decent government when the people of the United States decide to vote for the “reasonable man/woman” that the law is so fond of citing as being the arbiter of legal issues. As long as folks want unreasonable pious-sounding fanatics and assholes running the government, that is exactly what we will have. And that is exactly what we do have.