A Democracy In Its Last Throes?

Just a quick perusal of the news today gives me an uneasy feeling about the state of our democracy and the sad state of our leadership.  Bill Frist (may have) lied on his medical license renewal application, George Allen not only spews racist comments but apparently sought membership in a White Supremacist organization and Richard Armitage admits that he outed Valerie Plame.  Yeah, this is a great group of people that we have entrusted the running of our country to.

On the darker side, a judge in California has dismissed the legal challenge to the Busby/Bilbray election on jurisdictional grounds.  Apparently, if the House of Representatives rushes to swear in a member before the votes have even been counted, there’s no legal remedy for that.  I wonder if Joe Lieberman knows this, it might work for him in the Senate as well, all he’ll have to do is get his buddies to swear him in regardless of how the voters in Connecticut decide the race.  I wonder if this would work for Bush/Cheney in ’08, after all, there’s nothing in the Constitution that says the electors have to cast their ballots for the winner of the election, keeping Bush/Cheney would be a legal means to a coup.  It doesn’t seem as far fetched an idea as it would have six years ago.  Scary isn’t it?

Oh yeah, and the ballots in Ohio from the 2004 election are set to be destroyed meaning that we will never know (or at least have definitive evidence of) how that election really turned out.  If there wasn’t anything to hide, surely Ken Blackwell would want to clear the air and have all doubts about the election put to rest once and for all.  Sunlight is the best disinfectant and our government is a festering cesspool of corruption operating behind closed doors and heavily draped windows.  I keep wondering when enough will be enough, I don’t know how much more we can take before we reach the point of no return.  Maybe we have already.