The Wheels of Justice

do seem to grind slowly, but they're grinding on the Big Smirk bigtime, and it's just beginning.

Antifans of Karl Rove didn't get their indictment on Friday but the sudden resignation of Porter Goss as CIA Director may have plenty to do with the ongoing investigation and court cases involving various lobbyist scandals, in which mucho money and ladies of the evening are suddenly in the mix along with influence peddling and various other improprieties. A Goss senior appointee's name has surfaced in such a connection, and it's being reported that he will resign next week as well.

Meanwhile Senator Arlen Specter is making louder noises about investigating Smirk's wiretapping, while the Boston Globe and New York Times are questioning the Smirk's penchant for signing statements attached to laws that Congress passes saying that he has no intention of abiding by them. Both seem clearly unconstitutional and join a long line of impeachable offenses, but as none involves a blue dress, I must be wrong about that.

But Friday was also notable for an utter smackdown of Bushite lawyers. A U.S. Court of Appeals Judge called the Bush position on internet wiretapping "nonsense." The Bushites wanted to infer broad rights for the executive from the supposed intention of a law passed by Congress (where have we heard this before?). The judge had a different opinion: "There's nothing to suggest that in the statute. Stating that doesn't make it so."

What? Of course stating it makes it so. That's the whole Bushite rationale for everything. Bush is President, he's the decider, he's the guy who knows and always tells the truth, and so when he says it, it is so.

This is the same logic the Bushites tried to use on the UN panel on torture. Responding to one charge after another--to what one UN official called "the longest list of issues I have ever seen"--the Bushites simply repeated the same denial: the U.S. never under any circumstances employs torture, and any charge to the contrary is "absurd." Including the 29 documented deaths of detainees, presumably caused by cooking accidents.

The UN wasn't buying it. But their report won't be official for a few weeks. Those wheels.