"New York Gov. Spitzer resigns but more woes likely" reads the Reuters headline this morning.
I'm so glad we were able to run him out of office (and within the space of only a few days!) because we heard he had paid for s_x. Apparently nothing else would have worked in these chaste United States of America.
There's also that interesting subtext that his administration was a danger to so many very-big-money interests, but maybe I should stick with the observation that he wasn't eliminated because he was guilty of the kind of crimes of which Bush and Cheney are guilty. I'm thinking of, say, the torture of prisoners we hold in concentration camps here and around the world; the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the Middle East and elsewhere; the bankrupting of the economy of the world's richest nation; the discarding of an ancient Constitution he had sworn to uphold; the defiling, most likely permanently, of this Republic's reputation (the fundamental and most powerful instrument of a people's influence for good); and cynically pulling the people of the most powerful and secure state on earth into an endless war for which there is no explanation other than the stupidity of the man we call "Mr. President", the personal gain of his gruesome Vice President, but above all the obscene enrichment of their handlers, the corporations which are the only objects of their allegiance.
But the list of government officers guilty of real crimes continues beyond the names of these two rogue CEO's; it includes every member of Congress, the entire Supreme Court and anyone else who has remained complicit or just plain silent in their crimes. But in the end, although we are being poorly-served by a badly-compromised, not-so-free press, and we may argue that it's really a matter of degree, none of us ordinary mortals (remember "with the consent of the governed"?) can escape responsibility so long as our "leaders" and their paymasters remain free to continue their dirty work.
[image from LeggNet]