You folks are starting to make me think there really is something here. I was just trying to make a joke, but now it looks more convincing. I had no idea the frequency of psychiatric reactions is so high.

A key statement from the Am. J. Psychiatry article: "The microbiology of Borrelia burgdorferi sheds light on why Lyme disease can be relapsing and remitting and why it can be refractory to normal immune surveillance and standard antibiotic regimens." This means there is an excellent chance that Bush's mental state will indeed suffer further. That thought alone should have Iran running for cover.

The claims of "complete resolution" and "no recurrence" sound like the usual Bush White House spin, as ondelette points out Froomkin has suggested. I'd take it further and suggest it's ridiculous to claim he got the tick bite while bicycling. It's much more likely he got it while clearing brush on his ranch.

Interestingly, the CDC MMWM for June 15 (http://tinyurl.com/32wa6h) summarizes the data on Lyme disease for 2003-2005. There is a map with reported cases. Although cases in the northeast prevail numerically, there are reported cases reasonably close to Crawford.

...but about an alternative to impeachment.

Has anyone else read the piece by Mark Schmitt at TPMCafe on "transitional justice?"

It really sounds good to me. Just two paragraphs:

Consider, as an alternative to impeachment, and a means of reestablishing the lines of what just isn't done, a process modeled on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-Apartheid South Africa. Efforts of this kind fall under the label, "transitional justice," described by the U.S. Institute of Peace as a way for "emerging democracies to reckon with the abuses of past regimes." This may be an inflammatory metaphor, and of course ours is not an emerging but a renewed democracy, and the abuses are not the massive internal human rights violations or even genocides that have characterized the "past regimes" in most of the countries that have created such commissions. But nonetheless, these past six years have been a dark, obscure and singular episode in our history, and we need to understand the truth of it so that it will not be repeated or, worse, normalized.

A post-Bush Truth Commission would have as its goal to discover as much as possible about the full range of conduct during the recent period, not only violations of law but other practices that had the effect of impeding democracy, and making recommendations about preventing them in the future, which might include everything from constitutional amendment to changes in oversight to suggestions for the press. The idea would be to find the boundaries within which democracy can work – lines which should not be crossed. The commission would not be empowered to indict anybody, but should be delegated subpoena power (this is legally complicated) along with a limited power to grant immunity to witnesses, as well as a complete commitment of cooperation from the next administration.

There's more. Of course, I would like to nominate Glenn Greenwald to be a member of such a commission.

Is it possible that the two factions here-- one that is ready to impeach now, and the other that says the timing is wrong-- could actually agree on this alternative?

If so, kudos to Mark Schmitt for coming up with such a creative solution...

http://tinyurl.com/2jkguf

Yet this President Bush is not a good scapegoat. Rather than betraying the right, he has given it virtually everything it craved, from humongous tax cuts to conservative judges. Many of the worst errors were championed by conservative constituencies. Some of the arrogance in foreign policy stems from the armchair warriors of neoconservatism; the ill-fated attempt to “save” the life of the brain-dead Terri Schiavo was driven by the Christian right. Even Mr Bush's apparently oxymoronic trust in “big-government conservatism” is shared in practice by most Republicans in Congress. -- Is America turning left? (08/09/07)

The Economist doesn't much care for anything except money, so GWB never bothered them, but at least they're under no illusion about what he is. I'm also still giggling about this, said of Hillary Clinton: She also mentions God more often than the average European bishop.

I'm a subscriber, so the little flags that tell you whether or not the article is a free one don't show for me, but for those who want to have a bash, here's the URL:

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9621579

It requires a lot of work to compartmentalize just enough to be able to function in daily life, but not so much as to become an unfeeling automaton. And every so often it all coalesces, and you can't keep it all separated anymore.

Even well before the war, I kept having these little negative epiphanies, like the one when I realized while reading Krugman, that they really were succeeding in the way they wanted with the economy. (They being Bush & cronies.)

That might be when I seriously felt for the first time that we were really doomed.

The kids and soldiers doing the grunt work in Iraq? Probably a lot of them never really wanted or expected to be hanging out with the cool kidz, except maybe for some athletes.

I must admit some bias here, that I didn't think to mention before... I hated junior high, even more than high school. It was awful.

What's really odd is that I sometimes check out the slide shows in Yahoo, and awhile back I thought I noticed that GWB was looking especially clumsy, even for him. Photos often had an arm or a leg askew, or he was at a funny angle, and I wondered if there was some possible physical/mental reason.

Guess I should have checked those photos more carefully and commented on it...

I’m in strong agreement with Greenwald’s recent columns and the need to reality check “conventional wisdom” and pundits. MSM does not do this, the reverse in fact.

That said (and my comment was aimed at the Powers memo and Greenwald’s recommendation of it), I think the recent dust-ups between Clinton and Obama have more to do with politics and electioneering and little with substance, more with differentiating themselves from each other.

They also have to be seen within the context, which is Bush, his Iraq war, his refusal to talk one on one with North Korea and other “axis of evil” countries, the lack of control over departments, the stupid, pointless rhetoric (“old Europe-“ what purpose did that serve?) that maybe reflected the unseen, wars waged by Cheney and Rumsfeld on Powell and Rice, the incompetence and lack of accountability, etc., etc.

I think any of the Democratic candidates would engage with other countries if that offers a way to influence them. None will use nuclear weapons against a terrorist camp, and all will run a tighter ship than Bush, reducing the unnecessary belligerence and arrogance and mis-statements.

My comment was specifically on the Samantha Powers memo; apart from one swipe at Clinton, suggesting her as a person who “supported” the war, I saw the rest of her points as simply differentiating Obama from Bush’s policies of invading Iraq, disengaging instead of negotiating, careful and controlled official speech by all, and other governmental competencies we Americans have taken for granted up until Bush. I don’t know why Greenwald wrote it was “one of the best and potentially most important political documents I have read in some time.” It seemed to me just a spin for Obama, mild soft soap compared to the lies put out by rightwing and neocon think tank propagandists. I guess the idea is that Clinton portrays Obama as inexperienced and he portrays her as conventional old school. Who wins more votes based on the emotional content? No policy here.

My comments apply just to her memo, as I have not read anything else by her.

“Radically new perspectives” to me would be broad policy objectives like reallocating military spending to upgrading domestic infrastructure, reducing our military presence overseas, a goal of reversing the job flow away from service to production, which is killing this country on many levels, public works programs, a single payer Medicare or VA style universal health care system, massive aid to alternative energy efforts, a specific program for disenfranchising and shipping all lobbyists, public relations spoke persons, spin doctors, and advertising executives to reeducation camps, the usual pipedreams we see so often on these pages. I realize its hard for a politician to say they will set goals like this because it opens too much room for attack, and pundits will ask “what’s your plan to get there,” but I'd like to hear them put out for discussion, and I’m not nearly as impressed by the signifiers being put by Clinton and Obama and their camps.