... nitpicking about vocabulary is a great way to critique the administration. It's much better than attacking substance. It's also a double treat because the left attacks Bush for not having a good vocabulary and now you're going to attack Condi for having too good of a vocabulary?

I still maintain that for a political scientist or historian, even a bad one like Condi, 'lacuna' is a perfectly normal word, like paradigm.

I know Tim doesn't respond to questions and critcisms like Glen does, but I still don't get the point of making an issue of the word, when there are actual life-and-death issues at stake. Tactically, it is unproductive.

Instead of "lacuna", try using "cloaca". Kloh-ay-kah. Look it up! Use it in conversation! DO NOT name your baby girl Cloaca!

EVERYONE knows, lacuna was Racquel Welche's name in 1 Million Years, BC.

the frozen, frigid gateway to the Great White North!!

Lacuna is the new paradigm.

As usual, Tim is too snarky by half. What's the point of highlighting the use of the word lacuna? Did it seem pedantic? Did it seem cliched? Did you not know what the word meant? It is a very very commonly used term in academia, almost to the point of cliche, but not quite. Color me dumb, but I don't get your point.

There is more than enough about which one can criticize this administration, why nitpick this sort of crap? It's as intellectually dishonest as mocking John Edwards's hair or saying Kerry looks French.

If Bill Clinton were still in office, the pundits would be spinning the lacuna 24/7. So much has happened in the last few years, the Sec'y of State's mentioning of a lacuna in the law about killing an Iraqi family is not even newsworthy.

There is no lacuna of course, Bremer ensured those Blackwater guys will get off without even being charged.

Lacunas are everywhere, especially in the truth about this adminstration. Almost makes me wish I wrote editorials, I could have fun with this one.

Lacuna is absolutely the right word: In law (especially in civil law jurisdictions), a gap in the law is called a lacuna. They are to be avoided, as they can result in a non-liquet, or dismissal by a judge on the basis that there is no law to govern the dispute.

If we aren't going to hold Bushit accountable for the malicious slaughter resulting from our opening act, "Shock and Awe", why should we now small potato Blackwater's miniscule sideshow? I mean, tens of thousands more ,who weren't issued keys to the hardened bunkers that glorious night, weren't given any better a chance than those poor innocent bastards Blackwater clipped while protecting those ever so special diplomats. I mean, such a small number, what was it, seventeen (give or take a child or two)? Hell I bet at least that number died from heart attacks as they ran for cover when the cruise missiles were raining down on them that night.

No wonder Blackwater felt it could continue to indiscriminately butcher Baghdad "extras" as they plow through crowded streets protecting the relevant occupiers. How uncaring and unsupportive can we get? Granting these x-navy seal butchers backdoor immunity is the least we can do to secure the success of the occupation. Go America!

Innocent Iraqi civilians are massacred - including a family with a young child who were all killed by these trigger happy thugs.

Are these Blackwater cretins going to be punished? Will they ever be brought to justice under the law? Under this administration? Yeah, right.

Even if they are tried or brought in for hearings it will be among a jury of their peers- people corrupted by this administration's ideology, or people growing crapulent at the same trough.

It breaks my heart when I think of what happened. I grow sick when I think of the child burned to his mother's body after the car they were in exploded after it was shot at by these Blackwater animals.

I'm sickened to think that these bloodthirsty amimals were acting as agents of our nation. And I'm revolted in knowing that- due to the imcompitence and corruption of our government and laws- they will get off scot free.

When you get set up to bust a cocaine trafikkers airplane coming in with a shipment you really don't expect to see the vice president's sons hop out of the aircraft, do you?

What do you do when THAT happens?

Barry Seal got cowboyed.

Yeah, and no one is going to jail for the DC-9 with 5.5 tons of cocaine on it busted in MEixco last year and the Gulftstream II with 3.7 tons of cocaine on it that crashed this year in the Yucatan - both planes painted up to look like US government airplanes (because they were) and no one in the mainstream media is even going to mention it.

Immunity, it's priceless.

Lacuna? Does no one remember that contractors were granted immunity from Iraqi law by a positive action of Paul Bremer? From Wikipedia:

Two days before he left Iraq, Bremer signed "Order 17" giving all staff associated with the CPA and the American government immunity from Iraqi law.

Who does she think she's fooling?

The notion that the immunity granted the guards makes it more difficult to prosecute them now presupposes that they told the truth, that they pretty much confessed to unjustified killings. (If they lied, the limited use immunity is invalid.)

The fact that senior officials are confirming to news sources that there will be huge difficulties in the prosecution would seem to confirm that the guards 'fessed up.

Yet the State Dept. consistently parroted the official Blackwater version of the shooting for weeks.

If this is what they were saying publicly while they knew from the immunized testimony of the guards that the killings were unjustified, isn't this a lot worse than holding a fake press conference? Is it possible to hope for some consequences?

What does Condi Rice, Ph.D., have to do to get her ass handed to her?

This is the State Department, which is supposed to be the sober rational side of the operation.

We're reaching third-world levels of criminality in the higher reaches. Perhaps it goes along with the private armies.