Lets imagine turning the AG's office totally political. The people, in their infinite wisdom, elect a Dem or GOP president, but an AG from the opposite party who wins on his or her lawnorder platform; someone like say Ashcroft or Kenneth Starr. Then lets imagine the AG considering he is working for the "people" and only the "people" uses his office as a one man attack machine going after the President and anyone in his office; opening all sorts of investigations into everthying from his sex life, to his investments, to those parking tickets he forgot to pay in Cambridge while in law school.

Yes, having a pinhead president appointing some toady who undermines our civil liberties or spends his time wondering if porn makes us too horny to be good Christians is not a great thing. But at least that person must pass muster with the Congress and he/she has some supervision. Electing an independant prosecutor conjures up scene not unlike that Gilligan episode where Gilligan is made the sherrif and locks up the rest of the crew in a cave, thus barring their rescue once again.

That I can do without.

In the end, how is this different from 'lebensraum'?

My first impression was shock and emotional grief for both Ty and Renee, but then the picture, particularly Renee's expression seemed more symbolic than real. Renee seemed to represent an innocent America, which so easily and quickly bought into this great "war for freedom" finally forced to confront it's real cost. No, not just confront, but marrying it. Thinking of all the costs to both soldiers and those at home who love them, this picture conveys so much more than just Renee and Ty.

When John Kerry asked her about a fallback plan, she said: "I don't think you go to Plan B. You work with Plan A. You give it the best possibility of success." At another point in her marketing efforts, Rice declared: "It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work."

Wow! Foreign policy based solely upon one of those ubiquitous corprorate moral improving posters. You know, the ones that have some title like "initiative" or "teamwork" and a picture of some large whale flipping on its back or mudsplattered rugby players. I once worked for a company that splattered those artistic equivelants of wided eyed children on black velvet. Honest, there were actually people, from good schools even, who not only bought into them, but would put them in their offices; Vince Lombardi was a popular one with the "macho" guys whith the 'football injury' preventing any type of real sport or injury.

Still, these people bought into that crap and worse, they were moving on up. It played a large reason in why I was moving on out.

BTW, there was some kindred soul who came up with an antidote. Same style, but things like liners hitting icebergs or lemmings running off cliffs under the same sunny and empty rah rah word.

Soooo, what the spin cycle is saying is that the administration gets calls all the time from congressmen, or state legislators asking for fed attorney's to be fired for not using their office to go after political opponants. Hey, what is one Dominici among others? Why should they be concerned that a senator or congressperson asked them to fire a US senator for not using their office to trump up charges or hounding their political foes when there are so many other senators or congresspeople doing the same thing?

"You know," said Tony Snow, "Karl Rove would have been seriously concerned that Republicans in Arizona were killing off their Democratic challengers in drive by shootings, but we get so many complaints of Republicans killing off Democrats in drive by shootings. What's an empire to do?"

I concur with Glenn Greenwald and other blogger who believe the real tip of the iceberg is not the Yglesias (god bless you Julio) but the Quislings who bowed to party pressure and went after Dem rivals at a rate of 4-5 to 1 in indictments. It is any easy thing to research. Find out how many were filed and promoted right before an election and how many quickly died after the election. Then investigate the 'evidence' supporting each one, and, better yet, the source of the 'evidence.'

Just saying as a criminal attorney, but just saying, you would be surprised how easy a false charge can fall apart.

I meant fired a US attorney, but you knew that.