Everyone: "Ahhhhhhhh, it was a tough week for the White House..."

I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard "It's been a tough week for [insert corrupt White House official here]" on TV or radio this week.

It's been tough for this pack of dogs because reality, as always it will, is catching up with each and every one of 'em -- and fast, though not fast enough.

Let's start, arbitrarily, with the current Administration's top two law enforcement honchos, who

admitted this week that the FBI broke the law under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's ongoing refuting of the U.S. Constitution (see "Gonzales, Mueller admit FBI broke law").

Pardon me for deriving absolutely no comfort from FBI Director Robert S. Mueller (pictured, below) saying they're going to "fix this," or Gonzales's claim that he might pursue "criminal charges against FBI agents or lawyers who improperly used the USA Patriot Act in pursuit of suspected terrorists and spies." Gonzalez, Mueller, and all those directly involved in this entire affair have abused their powers throughout their participation with the present Administration, and now we have 126 pages of damning evidence proving all that those of us who howled at the initial revelations concerning the illegal extension of the USA Patriot Act to spy on Americans were right, damn it.

Thus far, thanks to Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine's current audit, we now know agents appropriated personal data on citizens sans official authorization, "improperly obtained" phone records sans authorization, and "underreported" (i.e., lied) to Congress about how often agents used national security letters to "ask " (i.e., demand) various businesses, institutions and employers to turn over customer data.

It's everything many of us feared -- and worse.

And this, I betcha, is just the tip of the iceberg.

In the meantime, in the wake of the guilty verdice against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, which may indeed prompt a Presidential pardon (curious to see, though, when President Bush plays that trump card -- after all, his pop-a-rooni pardoned the Iran-Contra culprits, who now serve under George W. -- our tax dollars at work), we must note that

the Guantanamo Bay camp kangaroo-court tribunals have, at last, begun.

The shame of America is at last reaching courtroom status: these tribunal hearings (involving many seized by the CIA overseas, illegally imprisoned via "extraordinary rendition" abuses of all international and domestic laws and/or treaties, and tortured) are being held with no defense lawyers present; reportedly, the three-man military panels will consider "evidence obtained by force" as viable. Welcome to Amerika, as the '60s radicals and revolutionaries used to say.

Furthermore, as also predicted by myself and everyone else who paid attention to more than the bullshit Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al have shoveled since March of 2003, it's proving increasingly impossible to maintain troop levels in this God-forsaken war --

but don't take my word for it; see "Pentagon struggles to find fresh troops," circa this morning.

"Why would any rational person serve under this Commander-in-Chief?" is the growing White Elephant in this quiet disaster taking shape, which I still fear will lead to an inevitable draft -- unless the government arrives at some more creative solution, like using military service to clear personal or family debt in the face of the growing economic crisis (similarly underreported in US media). "Why, indeed?" one must also ask, given the stellar care vets can expect

upon their return home after serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., further exposing the monumental incompetence, indifference and lack of even the basest empathy harbored by the Chicken Hawk President, Vice-President and Administration for those who serve their craven reliance on militaristic 'diplomacy.'

The chicken-hawks are at last being taken to task for their Katrina-like follow-up to their unending "Support Our Troops" retorts to any questioning of their decisions, methods, and madness.

You know it's bad when our President considers

a trip to South America (here seen with with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the start of their meeting in Sao Paulo)

preferable to facing the music in D.C. or pondering the weakest rating of any second-term president in 56 years.


It's even more incredible that he's South of the Border as

the the Bush administration considers a risky military rescue of three Americans held hostage more than four years by "drug-trafficking leftist rebels" in nearby Colombia --

-- or hadn't you noticed that was going down?

And that, again, is just the tip of the iceberg. Don't even get me going on the tax situation, including the encroaching damage the Alternative Minimum Tax of 1969 is wreaking among middle-class taxpayers in 2006, even as Bush crams his tax-breaks-for-the-rich down our collective throats. Don't even.

Hooooooooooboy, it's going to be a wild March. In like a lion, indeed!

Have a great Saturday.