Blah3 Editorial: 'Let Up? Nah.'

[americanstranger]

There's an old adage that says 'nature abhors a vacuum.'

But if nature abhors a vacuum, politics wants to squash the life out a vacuum like a blood-engorged mosquito who has just raised a quarter-sized welt on politics' arm. Politics wants to grind a vacuum into small, unidentifiable bits, to crush a vacuum into a shape so small you'd need a microscope to see it, to level a vacuum much like the US military levelled the Iraqi town of Falluja.

What am I talking about, you ask? Okay, I'll elaborate.

Since Laurence O'Donnell spilled the beans on Karl Rove as the leaker of Valerie Plame's identity, there have been precious few Republicans who have said anything about the case (outside of the now-completely worn out 'ongoing investigation' dodge). Ken Mehlman has hit the cabloids to attempt to re-write history, as if he took every fact available in the entire case and decided to state the exact opposite, but the net effect has been that he's been telling such whoppers, you'd have to be a brain-dead rube to believe any of it. Republican lesser lights like Norm Coleman, Peter King and John Cornyn have been yammering about shooting Tim Russert and ingoring the work of the government and angry Democrats, while hoping that something really big would bump a good old-fashioned case of treason off the front page.

But these guys are back-benchers, the B-Team, the pine-riders. The Washington Generals, if you will, when compared to GlobeTrotters like Frist and Lott - who have kept their distance from this particular stink-bomb. Tom DeLay and Orrin Hatch have both said they support Rove - but having a hopelessly corrupt Congressman and a nearly-irrelevant clothes-horse from a Mormon state defending you is kinda like having your little sister getting your back in a knife fight.

The White House, meanwhile, has pulled the blinds, locked the doors and put out the 'Gone fishing' signs, acting like a deadbeat who's three months behind in his rent and stands completely still in his bathroom when a knock comes to the door.

Bush has, for two consecutive days, backed off from opportunities to voice any support for his own 'brain,' and Congressional Republicans are issuing credulous claims about 'not knowing enough about the case' or saying they'd been out of the country for a week - which has got to be the lamest excuse ever in the age of global cable outlets and 24/7 news cycles.

Put all these ingredients together, and you've got yourself a vacuum. Which is where the Democrats come in.

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-as