The Torturer's Horse Scratches Its Innocent Behind On A Tree

Why is it that the good ones die but the bad live on forever? Why couldn't John Lennon have risen from the grave instead of McCarthy, or if you will, Curtis LeMay?

Praise be to Molly Ivens for hitting the nail on the head. I saw her on a pundit show a few weeks back and God help me if she doesn't seem to be suffering from some severe disease, maybe the "Big C." Her head wrapped in a scarf, she seemed an exhausted warrior nearly spent of ammunition, of strength, nearing the end of battle, splayed out on an infinite battlefield under a pitiless sun beneath a clock without hands on a day from no calendar.

Now, as the President signs Habeus Corpus out of law for the first time in a million or so years, the stormtroopers on the other side, gleaming and glistening with smug satisfaction, swathed in shiny, unwrinkled suits, preen as they surge toward ultimate victory. Good will triumph over evil, they say. Too bad the two will have become indistinguishable.

No wonder the world is more worried about Bush than Bin Laden. Turns out they're much the same. Good versus evil, good versus evil. Good versus evil. Blah blah blah.

So Molly Ivens dies of cancer and Karl Rove goes to a power lunch.


Our government has decided that in order to protect us they need the power to torture and kill us - with no checks on their power. The president decides who is a terrorist. He's the Decider. He decides. He doesn't have to tell anyone why. He doesn't have to produce evidence. He doesn't have to provide a lawyer. You're guilty because he says so.

And who exactly is this model leader upon whose shoulders the mantle of unrestrained power now so lightly rests?

People, when the groupthink passes you are going to have a lot to answer for. This is a man who cannot think. A man who says he hears the voice of God. A man who is proud about everything he does not know and is not curious to learn. A man who, backed in his youth and young adulthood by the most powerful cadre of snakeskin elites the world had ever known, and a father with claws deep in Central Intelligence, Big Oil, Big War and the White House, could muster no more than a C-minus average and a half-finished pantomime of military service. Not to mention a hundred lost weekends over the border.

This is a man who sleeps like a baby while your kids sweat in the desert and get their asses shot off so that Haliburton and Exxon can continue to plunder the pockets of the working poor. Your pockets.

Good versus evil.

I only hope that those of you who think it's okay to destroy the protections of the constitution and international law someday run afoul of your government. You'll want a lawyer then.

But you won't get one.

How long will they be able to jail you?

Forever.

Who will you be able to turn to and say, "there's been a terrible mistake!"

No one.

Who will ever know your fate?

God alone.

"You're a terrorist!" they'll say.

And that, friends, will be that.



I write to you from my desk at this psychiatric hospital, which is a fundamentally sane place. At least people here know they've got a problem.

Someone out there write a comment and help me keep from also going insane.