Remember the kid games "Simon Says" and "Mother May I"? These are essentially slow-motion races but the catch in both is that forward progress--which is always in the form of some ludicrous maneuver like "scissor steps" or "baby steps" or "giant steps" or skipping or hopping on one foot or the like-- can only be made when a particular rule is obeyed. If the director says "Take four giant steps forward" and you do it....BZZZT! You are busted and must go back, because the director didn't say "Simon says take four giant steps."

This is what our government has been reduced to. A giant fucking game of Simon, or in this case Bush Says. Doesn't matter what the actual action is, be it "take three baby steps toward revoking the Rule of Law" or "jump on one foot off the edge of this cliff into complete one-man rule." Bush can do any goddamn thing he wants and all the majesty of Congress, described in Article One of the Constitution of the United States because Congress is the governing body of our Republic, can do in their righeous rage at being stomped into the dirt by the Unitary Executive is to whine "But he didn't ASK us first!" Feh.

First up was Bill Keller of the New York Times, who first of all should get a new tailor and improve his posture. Doesn't help the Cause, Bill, if you sit hunched up like a puppy crouching next to a puddle of piddle just knowing that you're about to be paddled.

And to follow that with a defense of "Well, we judge every story on whether it's going to get somebody killed," and we've failed to report lots and lots of stuff if the gummint asks us not to because we're Good Little Responsible Beggars at the trough of information, and besides they're not playing fair, they leak lotsnlots of shit if they think it's to their advantage [*coughKneepadsMillercough*] and they never complain about those stories even though they're just as classified." blah blah ramble ramble.

And the worse part of it was that the interview was with Bob Schieffer, damn near the last of the non-intimidated Good Reporters, who I think would have stood up and cheered if Keller had come prepared with a ringing denunciation of the Unitary Executive theory, the fact that "in secrecy lies tyranny," the fact that said tyranny is not just creeping in the window but banging down the national front door and expecting to be thanked by the victim for "protecting" us.

Instead he just pointed out the fact that the SWIFT program was public information for a long time, and the fact that Bush himself had said loudly on many public occasions that tracking terrorism-related financing was a major campaign so the argument that the Times (et al--the fact that other papers had the story was almost let slide until Shieffer brought it up) was telling Osama Bin Forgotten something he didn't already know was horseshit.

But the true splooge of the Mother-May-I pushback to Executive tyranny came with the joint Specter-Levin appearance. They were actually both quite forceful with their statements, but they nearly wet themselves they were straining so hard to say "Of course we will let the President do whatever He thinks is best but we gotta have hearings first."

Bush forgot to say "Mother May I" before taking those baby steps over the cliff. Christ on a cooked-spaghetti crutch, it is with people like these that we must fight the war on tyranny? Oy vey.