Liar, liar, pants are on fire, your tongue is as long as a telephone wire

Today was a bad day for the administration. In the morning, we had suicide bombers killing over 100 Iraqis as reports filtered out of 9 more US troop deaths. Around noon, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, was found guilty on four counts of obstruction of justice and perjury. All day long, Congress heard testimony from US Attorneys forced out of their jobs, supposedly for performance reasons, but apparently for either prosecuting Republicans or not prosecuting democrats enough. One thing is clear from the last two items: nothing coming from senior levels of the administration can be trusted anymore. Here is a basic summary of their malfeasance:

1. They let subordinates lie for them, and then fall on their own swords to protect the boss. This is clearly the case for Libby, who lied to protect Cheney when everyone else in the administration actually told the truth to the FBI. Note that this indicates that Cheney is the paranoid power behind the throne; Karl Rove told Patrick Fitzgerald the truth about leaking a CIA agent's name, knowing that the media would follow up ineffectively. By the way, regardless of the ongoing trial, Bush promised to fire anyone connected to the leak, and Cheney and Rove both admitted doing so under oath. I somehow doubt they will be tendering resignations any time soon. Perhaps the media should harp on this a bit.

As to the prosecutors, they were honorable in their duties, even in the face of government interference that they considered tantamount to obstruction of justice. The higher-ups in the Justice Department smeared them anyway,m because that is what they do, and are now being bitten in the ass for it.

2. There is no accountability in our government, because the media gets too distracted. Anna Nicole's death, in the days that it happened, was still a smaller story than the continuing suffering in New Orleans, or Darfur, or Iraq, or any number of places. The Bush administration never fixes any of these, they just wait for the focus to pass. This is good for them personally, bad for their party, and horrible for the nation. As I mentioned yesterday, though, they don't really seem to care, so long as the bucks keep flowing their way. Look at Walter Reed, whose problems were outsourced to a former Halliburton executive, or Iraq, many of whose problems were outsourced to Halliburton, or ...you get the point.

In scanning tonight's news, there were stories in the NYTimes and WaPo about the administration's failure of credibility, but we all know tomorrow that they will still report the government's side in the interests of "fairness" failing to properly note the administration's global lack of any credibility on just about any issue. This needs to change.

3. Democrats are still being very, very cautious, which is dumb. It is time to say, repeatedly and publicly, that the administration specifically and Republican party in general is no longer a credible governing force. Afghanistan, Iraq, New Orleans, Walter Reed, Congressional pages, Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, Macaca, Ann Coulter, the list is endless, on every issue one could name. Time after time, it is time to treat them with the scorn that they've earned for years now. Rather than embrace a phony bipartisanship to sound nice, Democrats need to claim an alliance with the American people, fighting for the issues we support against a government that has functioned for the past six years as a kleptocracy. Taking the other side seriously as anything but an impediment for passing an agenda worthy of the American people is a waste of time at this point. They've fucked us over for long enough, and it is time for the grownups to take over. End of story.