The quickest way to destroy the functionality of American government is to destroy the rule of law itself. Declare the Executive supreme and beholden to nothing, flood the Department of Justice and the federal courts with lickspittle political loyalists with no personal code of honor, upend the balanced counterweight of the separation of powers, terrify the populace into submission to avoid any hue and cry, roll out the grand distraction of war to get the flags waving and the newsrooms into line, and never obey any law or regulation imposed by anyone, ever.

William Rivers Pitt nails it with Bad, Worse, Worst and Beyond

Again, a nation is stunned at the supposed existence of a heart in Cheney:

Cheney’s heart restored to normal rhythm

WASHINGTON - Doctors administered an electrical shock to Vice President Dick Cheney’s heart and restored it to a normal rhythm during a 2 1/2 hour hospital visit Monday. The procedure was described as a low-risk, standard practice. Cheney, 66, went home from George Washington University Hospital and was expected back at work on Tuesday.

About damn time:

Atlanta sued in police killing of 92-year-old

ATLANTA - The family of a 92-year-old woman fatally shot during a botched drug raid has filed a lawsuit against the city and police on the first anniversary of the killing.

The suit targets the city, Police Chief Richard Pennington and five current and former police officers. The family is seeking unspecified damages.

Combat brain injuries multiply

At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY.

The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs, show that about five times as many troops sustained brain trauma as the 4,471 officially listed by the Pentagon through Sept. 30. These cases also are not reflected in the Pentagon’s official tally of wounded, which stands at 30,327.

Supporting those troops…uh huh.

A United Nations survey released last week, of 110 Iraqi families leaving Syria, also seemed to dispute the contentions of officials in Iraq that people are returning primarily because they feel safer.

The survey found that 46 percent were leaving because they could not afford to stay; 25 percent said they fell victim to a stricter Syrian visa policy; and only 14 percent said they were returning because they had heard about improved security.

Scott McClellan, former mouthpiece for the Bush administration:

“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration “were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.”

At the time the Bush administration outed CIA agent Valerie Plame for political ends in order to intimidate her husband and others who would challenge the governments lies on Iraq and its WMD, she was working as a covert agent tracking weapons of mass destruction, particularly in Iran. These are facts, sworn to be true in a court of law, and not challenged by anyone other than talk radio fear pimps and the jackals of Faux News.

According to this same media, Iran is our largest enemy, and we are seemingly poised on the brink of waging yet another optional, illegal war, this time against an foe who might actually be able to fight back. By blowing Plame’s cover, King George has decreased our nations ability to monitor the proliferation of dangerous weapons by our enemies, and has made it easier for them to operate in secret.

He has given our enemies, one could say, aid and comfort.

Our president has committed treason. His Vice President, and other high administration officials have committed treason.

One can debate McClellan’s timing, and to be sure, his statement would have had greater effect if he had refused to go along with the lies (because his use of the phrase “I had unknowingly passed along false information” is laughable, and designed purely to cover his own ass if this ever ends up in court) and talked when it was occurring, but whatever the timing, the crux of the matter remains the same:

Our president burned a covert agent of the CIA for political purposes, lied about it repeatedly, and commuted the sentence of the only person charged in relation to this case.

The democratic party will ignore this, as they have ignored all the other abuses of power by this administration, because they know they can. The White House is virtually assured to them in ‘08, so tired is this nation of the reign of tyrants we’ve endured that they will vote in most anyone the dems foist upon us.

But unless this nation faces the reality of what has been done in its name the last seven-plus years, and holds the people who betrayed our trust, stripped us of our liberties and abandoned our democracy in their mad quest for ultimate power accountable, this nation deserves nothing better than the shame of the world. Until Bush and crew are universally accepted as the antithesis of America, instead of its embodiment, we must hang our heads. Until the day when the warmongering, racist puritans of our media are laughed at openly in public, when their lies and machinations are exposed in all their ignorant brutality, we are not free.

Either George Bush and his ilk are held to the rule of law, or it- and our entire notion of ourselves as a nation- are lost.

Iraq says 2 American guards detained

Iraqi soldiers detained two American security guards along with several other foreigners traveling in a private security convoy after they opened fire Monday in Baghdad, wounding one woman, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

U.S. military and embassy officials had no immediate information about the report, which follows a series of recent shootings in which foreign security guards have allegedly killed Iraqis. Last month, the Iraqi Cabinet sent parliament a bill to lift immunity for foreign private security companies that has been in effect since the U.S. occupation began in 2003.

Why isn’t this front page news?

We have an electoral system that always chooses between two evils, what Ralph Nader calls, “The evil of two lessers.” But choosing the lesser evils assures that evil rules and, as we have seen, the evil is deepening with each successive election.

Been on a Fugs/Holy Modal Rounders kick recently…everybody can use more jugband anarchy music, right?

POLITICS-US: Seizure of Iranians Failed to Validate Bush Line

WASHINGTON, Nov 17 (IPS) - George W. Bush administration’s campaign to seize and detain Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials in Iraq, presented by Bush himself last January as a move to break up an alleged Iranian arms smuggling operation in Iraq, appears to have run its course without having been able to link a single Iranian to any such operation.

None of the six Iranians now held by the U.S. military, however, has provided any evidence for the administration’s case despite many months of very tough interrogation usually employed on “high value” detainees.

Color me unsurprised.