I wouldn't get too carried away about public outrage. If you look back at Watergate, there was no outrage until the televised hearings. Nixon and his gang successfully covered up the scandal until Woodward and Bernstein uncovered enough evidence to get the ball rolling.

People don't automatically get outraged about something that doesn't focus their attention. Like public testimony. Pictures of course help, as we saw with Abu Ghraib.

What is called for is leadership. Like it or not, Barack Obama is the best we can feasibly do for President of the United States. If for some complexity of reasons he falls short as a leader, then it is a reflection of us. Rahm Emanuel Shmam Emanuel. If this silly excuse for a national policy executive is able to control what gets done in our names, then it is because the way we translate votes into action is inherently weak. He's Obama's man, and Obama is our man.

Eric Holder, of course, has to do the right thing in the context of a tanking economy and a failing attempt to create a meaningful health care policy. Then there is the prospect of global climate change on the verge of kicking into high gear. This is, to coin a phrase, a full plate.

I suppose one could look at the prosecution of the Bush gang as vital to our ethical standards, but on a practical level, it will look very bad if we go into a depression, continue to have a criminal health care system, and are beset by hurricanes, tornados, forest fires, drought, blizzards, and rising sea levels.

The "Republicans" may be criminal to the core, but they are masters at propaganda. They are in total spin mode, and if other concerns weigh heavy on the public, prosecuting the Bush gang may seem vindictive and grandstandish. Rahm Emanuel migh not be so bad afer all. It may be that he has a sense of priority, and survival as well.

Unfortunately, Obama doesn't have the experience Johnson had when he took office. He also listens to advisers who give him bad advice. I am still waiting for what I call the Bay of Pigs moment, when he realizes he has been had. So far it hasn't happened, but Afghanistan is turning into a debacle, and so far Obama isn't much of a leader on health care reform.

Something has to happen on health care, Obama or not. There's too much suffering and unhappiness in the land, and anger is rising. The Congress is a stinking mess, and our health care industry is a huge criminal operation.

What I find most surreal is the great chasm between our supposed level of sophistication in things technological, the arts, education, and the criminal level of our health care infrastructure. If no real reform takes place, then it is likely there will be a real upheaval in "American" politics. We can't go on indefinitely with such cravenness.

Again, you fall for the trap of assuming that anyone connected with the Bush criminal regime has anything legitimate to say, that there is a "debate" to win.

These people are criminals to the bone and deeper. The only reason that they are treated as otherwise is that there are sufficient "progressives" eager to earn points by "defeating" them with "arguments."

This is silly, and proof that there is no "spectrum" of "left" versus "right." If there really is a "spectrum," it is from civilization to barbarity, or mutuality versus mafia. Man's higher self to lower self is more accurate, but that would be a vertical spectrum. Hmm. A vertical spectrum. Now there's an idea.

Where was Lou Dobbs born?

I believe some good will come of this. It will be the source of some amusement to watch as the Cambridge police officials try to defend their minions, changing their story as the situation unfolds.

Of course, the most needed thing is to have a cleansing of police culture nationwide. It isn't simply "racism," but an attitude toward humanity in general, marginalizing vast swaths of defined groups of people - "races," ethnicities, nationalities, religions, disability conditions, gender, perceived sexualities, height, weight, attractiveness, wealth, position, haircut, neighborhoods, etc., etc., etc.

This applies to society in general. For some reason, for all our supposed "advancement," we still are afflicted by the need to have an "other," someone or someones to define as different, not us, inferior, threatening, and guilty. Now that "blacks" have moved from slavery to the White House, various "others" have moved into the vacuum: "Mexicans," Muslims, "Arabs," "terrorists," "liberals," "atheists," "socialists," and "abortionists." In the immortal words of that great sage Ray Davies, who'll be the next in line?