Listen...in the distance...a funeral

Listen. In the distance, the sound of a funeral march. But not the usual, brass-and-drums version played in New Orleans. No, this is The Washington Republican Dirge, played on shredding machines, with a whining choir. Security paper services, the ones that take away those rollaway bins lurking in the corner of every office in Washington, are working overtime, and hiring extra crews. Even the White House, especially over at Dick's office, has turned off the heat and cranked up the A/C to offset the heat the industrial-grade shredders are throwing off, as White House staffers, in shorts and shirtsleeves, throw ream after ream into the maws of those shredders. There are even a few, at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, that can grind almost anything into unrecognizeable pulp. Hard drives, CDs, thumbdrives, even framed photos of Abramoff, Cunningham, Ney, Hussein, even Rumsfeld, all the evidence goes into the hoppers, to become fuel for alternative-energy generators.

"In the meantime" now becomes a literal designator of the next sixty-some days, the official name of the last throes of this Republican Congress. And in this mean time, expect to see some of the ugliest behaviors, in service of ramming through the most extreme bills. Constitutional ban on abortion, make Bush's tax handouts permanent, more hand-off of legislative and constitutional powers to the executive, any an all are possible, even probable. And the floors of the House and Senate are going to make Hormel's rendering plants look pristine. Republicans are mean masters, and sorer losers, and they'll do everything they can to take their ball, OUR Constitution, home with them when they have to leave.

To any and all that can get near to these operations: Take picture, get copies, record conversations. Keep "contemporaneous journals," as both the FBI and IRS call them, because they can be used in evidence, even when the original evidence has been ground up, hauled away, and used for fuel or landfill.

Because America is doomed to let these fascists back in, if we don't learn exactly what they did, and hold them publicly accountable in such an extreme way that NO ONE will ever dare try steal America from its citizens again.

Treason is a hanging offense, and I wouldn't mind a few hangings. (Names available on request.)