RIP: Here lies the Rule of Law in America

Just focusing on one MSM story to celebrate this sad 4th of July, the day the rule of law died in America. Here are a few of the obituaries, courtesy the robots over at Google News:

"Leniency for Libby and the '08 presidential race", Christian Science Monitor - 46 minutes ago

"Libby might have sung ...", San Francisco Chronicle

"Bush won’t rule out full pardon for perjurer, Libby", Boston Herald

The Googlebot report 3,108 current stories on the topic. I especially like that last one. You know the ol' rule of law has been one pretty tough hombre, so ol' Dubya wants to keep one more stake ready to pound into its heart, just in case it tries to start moving again.

The Law? "The Law" is for innocent peasants in Afghanistan, not for friends of the resident of the White House. An unfair sentence for a lawyer who perjured himself and got caught? Not like he knew any better, eh? Well, in Guantanamo Bay Dubya has been imprisoning people longer than LIbby's "excessive" 30 months, and sometimes "American justice" a la Dubya discovers they've been sentenced unfairly--except that they were never sentenced in the first place. Clemency? Hell no. We just quietly dump those ones back on the street and expect them to be grateful and to keep their mouths shut. After all, Dubya could always throw them back in the slammer on Cheney's say-so.

Yeah, actually "the law" in America has been dead for quite a while, but there's also some quibbling about the exact timing of the Declaration of Independence, too. However, the anti-symmetry is just too much to ignore. The Founders of our government wanted publicity, they wanted everyone to know that King George had gone too far and they weren't going to put up with it any more. This King George wanted quiet. He wanted to bury the sad news under the celebration of the work of those great Founders. It didn't work as well as Dubya had hoped, but what's one more miserable failure for such a reign of error?

Founders, eh? So now it's the ship of state that founders. Cheney in the role of Captain Bligh? The rule of law isn't just a good idea, it's the law! That's supposed to be an optimistic joke of some twisted sort. I really do think laws are a good idea and the societies with good legal systems have competitive advantages over the others... So where does that leave Dubya's United States? On the wrong end of a short rope.