Yes, I Have A Smoking Gun In My Hand, But It’s Not Mine, Although I Can’t Recall Who Handed It To Me. Am I Still In Trouble?

Is it just me, or does it seem like the Bush administration is imploding? The weight of all of the scandals, the inappropriate use of government offices and the infusion of political priorities into every single aspect of our government is finally threatening to collapse the whole sordid structure they’ve built. The references to the Bush Crime Family have always seemed a stretch to me, but as the whole mess unravels, it appears more and more like racketeering all the time. Bush, Cheney, Libby, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rove and all the others, have not only acted inappropriately as representatives and employees of the people, but they have build an operating system that condones and facilitates all of their bad (illegal) behavior.

In an attempt to avoid Congressional oversight, the Bush administration, with the help of the RNC and big Republican donors, set up a shadow communications system within the White House. The theory was, that since the communications were made on a private system rather than a government system, the emails weren’t subject to public scrutiny. This theory, like the neo-con theory that led us into the quagmire of Iraq, was riddled with flaws and may just lead to their downfall. You see, private communications can remain private (unless of course you’re just an average American subject to spying by the NSA) as long as no crimes are committed. Once a crime is suspected, then the communications are subject to subpoena, and there is no executive privilege option for hiding emails that were routed through the RNC. Oops!

You can call it a conspiracy or a culture of corruption, but it’s worth pointing out the many and varied investigations that are either ongoing, or that have already resulted in convictions of Republican officials and operatives. They may seem on the surface to be unconnected, but the one thing they all have in common is electoral math. There’s Tom DeLay’s illegal redistricting plan in Texas, since struck down by the Supreme Court. Tom Noe’s illegal funneling of stolen money into the Bush/Cheney campaign (not to mentionhis wife’s questionable behavior as Chair of the Lucas County Board of Elections). There’s the firing of US Attorneys who refused to halt investigations into corrupt Republicans or refused to manufacture investigations into Democrats in key states. The NSA spying that appears to have had more to do with political intelligence than foreign intelligence. And the big one, the war that was supposed to provide George W. Bush with the political capital necessary to implement a neo-conservative (not to mention Chrito-facsist) agenda while providing cover for the behind the scenes war profiteering and shady maneuvers to ensure a permanent Republican majority, not through public acceptance of their tried and true ideology, but though manipulation of our electoral system from illegal redistricting to privately owned voting machines and more legal hurdles to voting.

There’s news today of a new sweeping investigation by the Office of Special Councel into Karl Rove and his entire political operation that used our government agencies to ensure Republican electoral dominance. The firing of US Attorney David Iglesias, the political pressure put on government employees to use their positions to further Rove’s political agenda, the missing emails and the shadow communications system are all on the table in this investigation. For the Bush administration, the strength of their ideas is not enough to ensure political victory, leaving manipulation and suppression of the vote as their best option for maintaining power.

It’s about time there was one sweeping investigation into how this White House operates, and the RNC communications network might very well be the thing that ties the many disparate investigations together. It might even lead to some answers as to what really happened during the 2004 election, although as I heard Noam Chomsky say in a speech recently, “that is mostly an elite affair” and he’s not wrong. Far too many people have ignored the very real possibility of a stolen election, either because it’s too frightening to contemplate or it just seems par for the course. But still, there is evidence emerging that suggests this same RNC system was used to count the votes from Ohio on Election Night. That is a huge development and it opens up the possibility that the OSC investigation could accidentally stumble upon the smoking gun. Now wouldn’t that be a nice turn of events?