Now that things are falling apart...

...the gops are getting spines.

Republicans See Signs That Pentagon Is Evading Oversight

Republican members of Congress say there are signs that the Defense Department may be carrying out new intelligence activities through programs intended to escape oversight from Congress and the new director of national intelligence.

The warnings are an unusually public signal of some Republican lawmakers' concern about overreaching by the Pentagon, where top officials have been jockeying with the new intelligence chief, John D. Negroponte, for primacy in intelligence operations. The lawmakers said they believed that some intelligence activities, involving possible propaganda efforts and highly technological initiatives, might be masked as so-called special access programs, the details of which are highly classified.

So here we have a case where the legislature of this country is actually doing its job rather than working from a checklist corresponding to the gop agenda.

The caffeine from a Saturday morning coffee is making me a bit dizzy, but it isn't the kind of dizziness that American politics makes me feel. Only a few months ago, I had completely lost faith in the American political system. I was convinced that the neocon fascists had won. Now I am not so sure.

See, Americans don't like liars and thieves. They may ignore what goes on inside the Beltway for most of their lives, but when it comes down to the wire, they aren't going to let the political mafia get away with their unethical behavior. We are a markedly divided country, yet the division is not Moldy Footballs verses Democratic Underground. The vast majority of citizens falls into the middle, something like the size and extent of the Great Plains between the Rockies and the Appalachians. It is the Valley of Indifference.

Indifference is not the same as ignorance. Sometimes indifference is caused by ignorance and sometimes indifference causes ignorance, but they are two distinct concepts. There are several cures for indifference. One is a great leader, who can convince the people to care about things that matter. Another is war casualties, and we can see that attention is expanded as our Iraq casualties mount. A third is a bad economy (funny how a good economy spreads indifference.) And then there is corruption.

The gops are scared. They are hastily trying to clean up the mess that they've made of this country, and they've caught the attention of the residents who live in the Valley of Indifference. The reverberations of their actions can be felt throughout the entire country, and the waves are reaching the Military Industrial Complex. They tried to use Katrina to strengthen themselves, but that backfired.

My faith in this country is a little stronger each day.