The Democrats' behavior is not only craven and destructive, but also based on pure myth that opposing George W. Bush on anything -- including Terrorism -- will doom them politically.

GG keeps coming back to the issue, almost obsessively, restating the point in slightly modified form again and again, with increasing frustration and incredulity. Why? Because this whole goddamn incident has a vertiginous, disorienting quality, a vague feeling of cognitive dissonance, a sense that the whole thing is unfolding before your eyes, but you can’t believe it’s really happening.

Just as Greenwald felt compelled to address the issue once again, I find that my own sense of frustration and betrayal has become more acute with every passing hour. I don’t remember ever feeling more furious and disgusted with the Democratic Party, which has provided no small number of such provocations over the years. A strong case can be made, as others have done, that much of the blame lies with party leaders like Emanuel and the creepy Democratic Leadership Council, who believe – correctly, I think – that the Republicans have no virtually no chance whatever to win the presidency next year (absent some manufactured nuclear confrontation with Iran or the like, a possibility I hardly mean to suggest is especially remote). Accordingly, the strategy of some of the satraps is to avoid rocking the boat, to avoid taking a stand on any controversial issues of any kind, and to simply run out the clock until they can take their expected turn at the helm in 2008. What I find particularly incomprehensible is the myopia of those who regard this incident as some intra-party squabble of limited consequence – “We can hardly be expected to march in lockstep and agree on every little issue now, can we?” – rather than a fight over the soul of the Democratic Party. Does the party stand for something – anything – or is the justification for its existence nothing more than the retention of power? As far as I’m concerned, the question has been definitively answered; the Democrats are an aggregation of opportunists and ciphers that will never constitute a repository of anyone’s hopes or political aspirations. God knows I will never identify myself as a member of the Democratic Party, nor will I support an organization whose identity is nothing more than "not Republicans." That just isn’t good enough.

As I asked yesterday, how can these fools remain so willfully blind to the fact that normal human beings feel nothing but loathing and contempt for politicians who cringe like whipped dogs in response to every threat, who lack even the smallest measure of dignity and self-respect needed to stand up for their basic convictions. As GG points out, the true horror of this capitulation is not the Democrats’ typical, breathtaking absence of principle (though it certainly is that too), but its stunning POLITICAL stupidity. After denouncing Bush as a liar and a criminal and an imbecile, a petulant half-wit manifestly unfit to serve as President of the United States, the Democrats have, with this single act of craven opportunism, ratified virtually every criminal act committed by this cabal of thugs over the past six years. Illegal wiretapping? Habeas corpus? Secret rendition and torture? The Guantanamo gulag? Every one of these investigations has now been tainted as a witch-hunt and an exercise in captious grandstanding.

The Democratic Party is self-immolating, and it is a revolting and infuriating spectacle to behold.

What a fantastically repellent and depressing story. From so many perspectives.

Yes, King is quite right; a “dirty, dreary, dispiriting shame.” Vick is a stupid, sadistic thug. Fuck him, and fuck the apologists who will surely cast him as a martyr to racism and an exemplar of black cultural authenticity. But the story is just too complex to be dismissed as nothing more than a tale of unbridled arrogance and entitlement run wild.

Prison? For up to five goddamn years?!! Hmmm, makes me wonder; what are the chances that Bush may step in, in order to commute a sentence that is clearly “excessive?” Where are the legions of compassionate souls who recently displayed such singular sensitivity to the scourge of prosecutorial overreaching? Yes, Vick has earned his fate and surely deserves whatever he gets. But that hardly dissipates the stink of hypocrisy surrounding the manner in which he got it.

And speaking of hypocrisy, King is also surely right about the inevitability of the Falcons’ “coming after some of the millions they've already paid him.” Quite simply, that’ll make the rednecks go absolutely apeshit; there is nothing they love more than playing boss for a day, and wallowing in the fantasy of firing an uppity athlete (especially, needless to say, a black one) that refuses to eat as much shit as they, themselves, have to swallow in the course of a typical workday.

Barry Bonds acknowledges doing steroids (which, incidentally, didn’t violate the rules of baseball at the time)? Just fire him. A player is pulled over with a joint in the car? Gets caught with a gram of blow and a couple of hookers? Is convicted of his second DUI? Hey, no problem: Void their contracts, recoil in shock and indignation, and suspend them for life. Of course, that strategy might be a bit problematic if the league knew all about such conduct, or – as with the McGuire/Sosa home run chase in ’98 – simply kept its eyes wide shut while the billions kept rolling in. Hard to muster up much indignation about steroids, for example, with a bottomless pot of amphetamine-laced espresso on hand in every players’ lounge in professional baseball. There are legal terms – “estoppel,” “unjust enrichment,” and the like – that apply to such circumstances, and are intended precisely to prevent a party from reaping the benefits of encouraging or passively colluding in the unlawful conduct of another. Parties engaging in such conduct are generally described as having “unclean hands,” and they don’t come any filthier than those of Major League Baseball or the National Football League.