I'm waiting for the "Reichstag Fire" between now and the November 2008 elections so that Bush can officially become the dictator he has joked about being.

I think it was 9/11, and we're still dealing with the shockwaves from it. They're just sealing the deal, solidifying control. I also am really curious how the elections will turn out, or whether there'll be some national emergency declared during or right before them.

Right now I'm listening to the committee hearings, to hear aptly-named Republican apologist Representative Cannon indignantly (and illogically) intone that if Congress pushes on this fight and loses it in the courts, that the way will be paved for a more imperial presidency, and a stronger Executive Branch -- so, by his reasoning, it's better to appease Bush than to fight him, better for Congress to lay down and let Bush/Cheney do what they want than to hold them accountable to the law.

I was glad that Chairman Conyers called him out on that.

...scarily enough, I feel like there's enough imperial inertia to the ever-expanding Executive Branch that it feels like even if the Republicans are swept out in 2008 (again, assuming Bush/Cheney[Rove] let us have free and fair elections -- I feel like we need the UN to monitor our elections, although that would play up with the black helicopter crowd!) -- that we will still have an overly-powerful Executive Branch in dire need of serious pruning, regardless of who is in power.

Sigh. Now Republican James Sensenbrenner is saying it's an unnecessary provocation of a Constitutional crisis. So, along with Chris Cannon's appeasement stance, it looks like these are the talking points the GOP is using on this, the whole "if we push this fight, we will lose" angle instead of recognizing that it was Bush/Cheney(Rove) who initiated the wrongdoing to begin with, and that Congress needs to stop it. The GOP are deriding the Democrats for being partisan, but they're clearly revealing themselves to be the partisan faction in this whole enterprise, in their refusal to part sides with Bush/Cheney(Rove), even in the face of their illegality.

Party loyalty over loyalty to country, law, and government.

Christ, I dearly hope they pay for this in 2008.

I listened to most of the House Judiciary Committee hearing, and I have to say that Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) wins the gold star for getting right to the point and sticking to his guns on this clash between branches, and for stalwart defense of the Republic-in-name-only that our country is fast becoming. I wish we had more representatives like him -- if we had, Bush/Cheney(Rove) might never have happened.

Honorable mentions go to Brad Sherman (D-CA), Maxine Waters (D-CA), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) for fairly eloquently putting this rogue regime's feet to the fire, and for politely excoriating the GOP minority and trying (even if futilely) to remind them of their Constitutional duty.

And speaking of the other side of the aisle...

A big, fat Bronx cheer to GOP Representatives Randy Forbes (R-VA), Chris Cannon (R-UT), James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Lamar Smith (R-TX), and Louie Gohmert (R-TX) for doing yeoman's service for the Unitary Executive/Dictatorship principle of government, and for their repeated, dilatory amendments intended to derail debate and confuse the issues at hand, offering what cover they could for their overlords at the White House.

Randy Forbes was the worst of the bunch, the most shamelessly partisan of the Unitary Executive's defenders, although Cannon and Sensenbrenner surely win the Neville Chamberlain Award for appeasement in the face of tyranny, both riding hard on the "we can't win this fight, so let's not have it" line of argument -- which, to my layperson's mind, is a waving a white flag of surrender to the Executive Branch, one step worse than the rubberstamped disgrace of a Congress the GOP had before the 2006 elections.

Digby's right on the money on this...

Blaming the Iraqis for failing to come together is quickly becoming a convenient story for American politicians of both parties. And I'm sure that many Americans want to believe that those rotten Iraqis are unforgivably ungrateful, by failing to come together in peace and harmony after we liberated them and all.

And, weirdly enough, this is something Noam Chomsky and others have predicted whenever a US invasion goes sour -- it's never our fault something isn't going the way the leaders envisioned it; it's invariably the fault of the Third World pawns we've got in play.

If only the Iraqis were made of better stuff, our exceptionalist American plans would succeed -- or so this attitude goes -- the scary thing about that is that this attitude is definitely endemic in both parties, which doesn't leave much room for a change in direction, barring some serious regime change in our own country.

White House spokesman Tony Snow responded with strong language.

The George Washington-used-executive privilege line came up in the House Judiciary Committee hearing session, too -- so clearly Karl Rove's people (or whatever off-the-shelf, below-the-table, across-the-Beltway, in-the-shadows group of RNC operatives they've got handy) were busy handing out talking points and marching orders to their operatives in government, to try to buttress the Unitary Executive's claims.

Does the Democratic Congress realize (YET?!?!) that they need to start playing hardball?

The only thing left to do for Bush is figure out some excuse to suspend those pesky elections. But that might require declaring martial law and we all know that could never happen, right?

Never! They won't declare it martial law; rather, it'll be something like the "National Emergency Peacetime Initiative" or "The Defense of America Act" -- something nicely euphemistic.

What I keep wondering is whether some diehard dead-enders will stage a terrorist event so Bush/Cheney(Rove) can have the excuse to declare their national emergency, just in case Al Qaeda's not obliging enough. If you want it done right(wing), sometimes you've just got to do it yourself!