If a Democracy Falls in the Middle of the Wilderness...

...and only Republicans are there to witness it, does it make a sound? Apparently not, if the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment hearing today is any indication.

Back in the good ole days when presidents only bugged Democratic National Headquarters with the aid of the CIA and FBI and raided Daniel Ellsberg's shrink's office and then went to extraordinary lengths to cover it up, Congress still pulled together in a bipartisan fashion and wrote up articles of impeachment against said president.

Ah, the good old days, when crooked politicians were almost impeached before slinking out of office to avoid the sphere of exaction.

Today, we're seeing a new breed of politics and media coverage. Not only were the first impeachment hearings against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney already a partisan circus but the media and even left wing bloggers are hardly even covering it.

At last count, the number of media outlets covering the impeachment hearings numbered 364, compared to the 339 covering the news that California became the first state to ban transfats in restaurants. As regular reader Comrade Rutherford pointed out, Glenn Greenwald was among the very few A list bloggers even covering the hearing and even then it was hardly mentioned.

Up to a point, I can understand the "liberal" blogosphere's reluctance to expound upon this. After all, the hearings were literally unthinkable less than a year ago and were basically verboten according to Eva Braun House Speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi. It's notable that the Democrats in the 110th congress, which so far have shown the White House about as much spine as a microwaved Twinkie, waited until Bush had less than 6 months left on his term. We've known since 2003 that Bush lied us into Iraq. We've known for years and years that the only agenda that's succeeded in Iraq is the unconscionable bloating of private industry involving, among many, many others, a corpulation who just happened to employ the man genially regarded as the vice president.

We've known these things and many, many, many other things, things that prove that everything Bush has ever said about Iraq, about NSA wiretapping, about the use of torture, extraordinary rendition, about anything and everything, has been a bald-faced lie.

Yet the official line, according to ABC, is "(t)he Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee is concerned the Bush administration exceeded its authority in several areas." Yeah, that's right. The "Democrat-controlled" committee. In which the most vocal member is referred to by ABC's Tom Giusto as "Democrat member Rep. Robert Wexler."

I think the fact that we've had to wait for over 7 1/2 years to even address the possibility of articles of impeachment is telling and the zeitgeist is saying, as does the headline of this ABC News item, "Why now? Isn't this too little, too late?"

We should've been seeing hearings such as this literally five years ago, before the last general election. An impeachment hearing five years ago would've all but cost Bush the election in 2004 and we'd probably be out of Iraq by now. But we haven't because the Democrats wet their legs (and still do in all matters national security) everytime Bush waggles his finger at them and threatens them with a rolled-up copy of the Constitution.

The real story is the Republican party. At least the lapdog Democrats are pretending to yip and yap at the junk yard dogs of Bush and Cheney when they're almost clear of the gate. The Republicans, in an election year, still cannot quit these men anymore than poor Jack Twist could quit the emotionally-stunted Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain.

They still march behind them single file into the fucking bunker in lockstep unison, loyal to der Führer.

And it's not merely because Bush is a fellow Republican. No, no, even toad-brained simpletons like Republicans don't think in such simplistic terms. No, no, Constant Reader, they're still not hoarsely crying about Democrat-Stalinist show trials (Yes, several of these so-called lawmakers actually called this preliminary hearing a "trial") and political stunts.

It's because they'd tied their own political fortunes into Bush's lunacies, follies and Ponzi Pyramid schemes. Because they can't "reverse" themselves because that would make them look like flip-floppers like John McCain. Because they cannot and will not come into the light of day.

Because the Republican party, once a legitimate party for conservative beliefs, is so morally palsied that they simply do not know how to do anything that's remotely humane, decent and, well, right.