It's very frustrating watching the whole Gonzales implosion, since I gnashed my teeth when he was confirmed, listened to his testimony then, and thought "He's a hack." But they confirmed him, anyway, despite some clear reservations, and so here we are. You get what you confirm, you know?

Bush will stand by his man, regardless. When you're really hardcore about wrongdoing, you want loyalists and cronies in your ranks, and the Bushies have packed their ranks with loyalists and cronies from top to bottom. Gonzales gets to be flogged so that his higher-ups don't have to be, busy watching the clock run out on this rotten presidency.

Helluva job, 'Berto! Stay the course, keep politicizing Justice, if you can, and hope that some looming disaster distracts the public eye. It's disgusting to think that there remains probably 20% of the country that still thinks the Bush League are doing great by this country.

He is our No. 1 crime fighter. He has done so much to help keep this country safe from terrorists.

So long as "crime" = "anything the Bush League doesn't like," yeah. And so long as "terrorists" = "anybody who isn't a loyal Republican," certainly. It holds water, see?

Heckuva job, Albie!

I think the GOP will suffer a worse fate if they do nothing with or to Bush and Cheney. The Nixon-era Republicans created the appearance that "the system worked" in their drive to salvage things by having Nixon resign before impeachment was thrown his way. Damage control-as-statesmanship.

However much non-reactionary people would love to see Bush and Cheney impeached, and however much they deserve it, they're just two men, and the problems of the GOP go way deeper and broader than just those two men -- they're symptomatic of reactionary politics, the logical expression of a very particular ideology and philosophy of power; they weren't its architects; they just ran with their ideology as opportunity presented itself, hoping fear and terror would hold the line when their rhetoric thinned, their logic circled back on itself.

The consequences of Republican acquiescence to the Bush agenda, their complicity in the Bush Leagues' wrongdoing and subversion of both Constitution and government is going to fall upon the GOP across the board, and not be safely contained in the fates of one or two men. They're going to take a bath at the polls in 2008, and they deserve to. Political payment's way overdue for them.

Maybe individual Republicans will try to salvage their political careers, but that same doctrinal unity and groupthink that they employed so ruthlessly in their bid for power means that the red stain of Republican power politicking is still on their hands, and isn't washing off; part of the peril of sacrificing their moderate wing -- they can't pretend to be moderates, anymore. And they're all going to pay for it, and I'll laugh. They're way out of step with the majority opinions on fundamental issues, so they can't even look to that as ideological cover.

Impeachment of Bush and Cheney would be, perversely, a protection for the GOP at large, by making it appear that those two hijacked the system and the party -- But the GOP can't take that route, and so they'll take a pounding at the polls. I think Bush & Co. handed the Democrats a majority, and there's nothing the GOP can do to stop it, short of sabotaging or halting elections.

More important is what the Democrats do in '08 to undo the damage the Bush League did to our system. That is critical. So much damage to fix.

I can relate to HH's article. I can't even remember all the names my parents (particularly stepdad) hurled; my mom was better at just a sharp, biting tone and "First name! Middle name! Last name!" rendered caustically.

But stepdad used things like "Pissant!" "Shit for brains!" "Shithead!" "Fuckface!" -- along with some particularly dramatic physical discipline for the worst offenses (hair-pulling, a deadly weapon when paired with 70s hair).

I think Gen X was probably the last generation from the parent-centric culture, where the kids were satellites who orbited around their parents' world; after that, things moved to a more kid-centric kind of arrangement. I don't know why that happened, exactly. Maybe as product marketing aimed lower, and kids became commodities/accessories, something changed, or maybe Baby Boomer parents didn't want to inflict what their folks did to them on their own kids; or maybe they just wanted to be friends to their kids, instead of parents.

While the name-calling and assorted parental meltdowns were something to get through, one thing I think kids today miss is being left alone. If parents ruled our Gen X world, at least when we were out of sight, they left us the hell alone, so long as we showed up before curfew had passed. I kinda feel bad for the kids today who're hoverparented and coddled and aren't left alone. Maybe they're not being called names by their best friend parents, but they're kind of being smothered in the process, infantilized.

Probably Baldwin's outburst (and its subsequent exposure) is more a reflection of his privilege than anything else. He's an actor, a celebrity -- he's used to getting his way. Same with Kim Basinger. Celebrity parents are probably the last bastion of parent-centered culture, where there's no way the kids can hope to outshine their folks, and get treated accordingly. Then again, I wonder how many celebrities are psychopaths; probably a lot -- paid incredibly well for comparatively easy work, lots of attention, power, money; yeah, I can see how it would draw them. Kim Basinger's airing of that call seems awfully psycho.