I wonder, then, if Elizabeth can turn her personal tragedy into a public statement and serve not only as a symbol of courage and perseverance (and she's going to need every ounce of those) but also as a symbol for our pressing need to beat this disease by supporting basic and clinical sciences. Most people may not know this, but the National Institutes of Health (the primary source of funds for those of us engaged in basic research in biological sciences, which includes cancer biology) are funding fewer and fewer applicants. These days, only 5% of grant applications are funded by the NIH, which is a disaster for the American scientific establishment. (And this is just the sciences that may result in lucrative drug design. Other types of basic sciences, e.g. astrophysics, for example, are in even direr straits.) So I wonder if Elizabeth Edwards' personal tragedy made public will be what it takes to get through to people that there has to be a change in how science is treated in this nation of ours. And perhaps those staunch Bible-thumpers who think that stem-cell research is an Affront to God (tm) would instead realize that working to save lives is one of the top purposes of human existence. Perhaps if something like cancer (which, though prevalent, is often something that happens to other people) is given such a public face and is battled with so much courage and conviction, people of all kinds will begin to think that gee, if only Elizabeth had more medicines and techniques available to her in this fight, she might actually make it. Maybe, you know, that sciency stuff is actually a Good Thing (tm). Perhaps we should re-evaluate our hardline stance on it. It might be worth a shot, you know, for Elizabeth.

Then again, most likely it'll just be a piece of juicy gossip tossed about to fill in the gaps in our threadbare 24-hour news cycle. ("Edwards out of the race yet? How about now? Now? No? Geez. When would that man ever learn?") And everyone will get sick of it very quickly.

This is yet another example of the "if we say it enough, it will be true" mentality that grips Washington D.C. like a steel vise. The President, the White House officials, the spokespeople, the insider Beltway media figures, and of course certain members of Congress seem to believe that if they repeat certain platitudes (or bromides, or inanities, or "funky" intelligence or outright lies), and if they do it enough, the gullible American public will magically begin to believe them. There was a time when, indeed, this technique seemed invincible.

Thank the small deities of public discourse, this isn't the case anymore. Whew. It appears that the American public makes its abode in the real world. The arrogant reality-making elite appears to have misjudged the power of this Universe. They cannot play God, all they can do is delude themselves. Well, now they're caught in the maelstrom of their own devising. The only problem is, they're dragging us down with them.

One thing for sure, the power of our popular vote (regardless of the machinations designed to make it irrelevant) seems to have born its first fruit: the Congress is beginning (slowly, with much creaking of rusted joints) to do its job. Huge relief, that. The ossified fools who (through our complacency as much as anything else) sit on top of the world at the moment cannot lie to us forever. They simply don't know how to do that. And now that we've had enough, let's also make sure that their days are numbered for real. Let's not elect ossified liberal fools to replace the ossified conservative ones. Then maybe, just maybe, we can emerge out of this disaster without aggravating it too much.

Poor meek Republicans, now under attack from evil investigating Democrats. Who will, mind you, will continue to investigate scandals, real or IMAGINED, you see, regardless of whether Gonzales will stay. Because, see, he's such a plump little target for the pit bulls of the Lunatic Left to latch on to.

You see, he's not done anything criminal (yeah, neither did Libby, remember?), he's just such a dork that he's just going to attract more criticism from the vultures circling about the rotting carcass of the Republican party. But I wonder if the editors of National Review ask themselves this very obvious question: why does the Republican party resemble a rotting carcass these days?

For that matter, why is Gonzales, possessing a notable lack of a "fine legal mind" an Attourney General in the first place, and why has he been in that post for the last who knows how long? Why are there thin shiny threads leading from Gonzales to Rove and Bush, just as there were threads leading from Libby to Rove and Cheney?

Oh no no, those are not the relevant things to think about. You see, the real trouble for the Republican party is those evil bad bullies, the Democrats, who are hurting the feelings of all the honorable upstanding conservative gentlemen. For shame! These Democrats should pick on someone their own size, not the meek as milk GOP, which would never hurt a fly, neither through a disastrous war of choice nor through slimey attack ads, nor even through politically motivated firings of its own appointees.

No wonder people are fleeing the GOP in droves. I would say it's like rats from a sinking ship, except that the rats are all staying with the ship this time around. Which is fine. That's where their place is.