1. I love old-fashioned, small-town 4th of July parades. When we lived in Northern California's San Geronimo Valley in Marin County, we participated, along with everybody else in the small rural community of Woodacre, in as Norman Rockwell-like a parade as you can imagine. This year, we were at the somewhat larger one in suburban Corte Madera.
There are floats and marching bands and bright-red firetrucks, kids on red-white-and-blue-streamered bicycles and local politicians waving from open cars
-- the whole nine yards. Though there are exceptions, it is rare to find in many of the thousands of such all-American parades any public mention of the underlying meaning of the celebration and its possible connection to our current struggle for liberty in the Bush era. (Although in recent years, one has been able to find the occasional anti-Bush T-shirt and protest sign, and on this year's 4th, I actually saw an anti-war float in the parade, drawing quite a few
cheers.)
I sometimes talk with teenagers and younger kids at these parades -- sometimes even their parents -- asking them if they know what we're celebrating.
Mostly I get blank stares, or references to fireworks, barbecue picnics, and watermelons.
In past years, when I engaged in conversation with some paradegoers, especially the adults, about how our current King George was running rough-shod over the Constitution and the accompanying Bill of Rights, often they said they were appalled to hear that. They just hadn't been paying that much attention to what was going on, they said; they figured that Bush, leading the country's "war on terrorism," was doing what has to be done and they trusted him not to go overboard.
But this year, as the current polls reflect, the reaction of the public is quite different. Nearly 60% think the war in Iraq is a mistake, and 42% nationally, according to the Zogby poll, think impeachment hearings are in order if Bush lied our country into that war -- which certainly seems to be the case, given the overwhelming evidence from the leaked, top-secret Downing Street Memos from inside Tony Blair's war-council meetings.
Middle-class people I've talked with in recent days (and letters I get, especially from moderate Republicans) seem more leery of Bush's pronouncements, more suspicious of his policies and agenda, more willing to entertain the likelihood that all governments lie big time, and that while most such lies do little immediate damage, Bush's lies are getting tens of thousands of people killed and maimed, and spending the U.S. into humongous debt.
2. ROVE'S POTENTIAL LEGAL PROBLEMS
Let's forget for a second the hypocrisy of the GOP's going after President Clinton because of private, consensual sex. Clinton, the Republican pack finally came to spin, wasn't being impeached because of his erotic misbehavior but because he lied under oath in denying it.
Now we're not quite there yet -- we don't know precisely what Karl Rove said, to whom and when -- but let's suppose that Rove lied to a grand jury and/or the FBI or other official investigators in connection with the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. (Reportedly, Rove has been named in the notes of Time Magazine's Matthew Cooper's as one of key White House officals with whom he talked about Plame just days before rightwing columnist Robert Novak revealed her name and job.)
Again, just speculating here -- since we don't know if the special prosecutor is going after Rove because he may be one of the the Plame-leakers or because he participated in a grand cover-up of whoever did the leaking. But If Rove did indeed lie under oath or to the FBI, what are the chances that Bush didn't know? And will the upright moralists of the GOP demand Rove's head, will they urge he be removed from his White House position? You know the answer as well as I do: There will be a rally-'round-Karl chorus from the GOP, denying, delaying, smearing others, etc.
And, if worse comes to worst in this scenario, Rove, if caught red-handed, may attempt to escape a probable felony indictment on the leaking charge by saying that he thought Plame's CIA status was well-known in Washington; that way, he'd be off the legal hook, since in order to fall afoul of the law, he would have to have KNOWINGLY revealed her secret identity.
And if that doesn't work, and/or if Rove is indicted on a coverup charge, there's always the good ol' presidential pardon, a conflict-of-interest Republican speciality when the heat gets intense. (Ford pardoned Nixon in the Watergate scandal, Bush#1 pardoned Caspar Weinberger in the Irangate scandal -- before he'd even been charged with anything.)
So, Rove -- one of the most hated but most feared politicos in America -- eventually may escape the legal noose currently locating itself around his neck.
But, Washington politics being what it is, one can expect (as in the Watergate scandal decades ago) that, by turning over one rock, a whole lot of other smelly scandals will be revealed.
Just think of it: Rove on trial, Kenneth Starr as his chief counsel, with a witness list that might well include Robert Novak, Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (Plame's husband that Rove was angry at), Jeff Gannon/Guckert, Judith Miller, Chris Matthews (who reported that Rove told him that Plame "was fair game"
after her husband criticized the Administration), Bill Frist, Scott McClellan, John McCain, Ken Mehlman, Ralph Reed, et al. What a show that would be!
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