For some, it is a matter of outrage that President Bush has renewed his support for Alberto Gonzales even after new evidence has emerged that the Attorney General has repeatedly lied about the US Attorney Purge. Myself, I see it more as a matter of confirmation and almost a welcome one in that it confirms the nature of the debate we're having.

This isn't a case where Alberto Gonzales has fallen short of the president's standards or bungled some process. This is the standard. The Attorney General has done and is doing precisely what is expected of him.

It is not too much to say that everything that has come out of Alberto Gonzales' mouth on this issue has been a lie. Sure, that sounds like hyperbole. But it's just a factual summary of what the public record now shows.

And the president is fine with all of this. Fine with the fact that the Attorney General has not only repeatedly lied to the public but has also been exposed as repeatedly lying to the public. He's fine with at least two US Attorneys being fired for not giving in to pressure to file bogus charges to help Republican candidates.

Of course he's fine with it. Because it comes from him. None of this is about Alberto Gonzales. This is about the president and the White House, which is where this entire plan was hatched. Gonzales was just following orders, executing the president's plans. This is about this president and this White House, which ... let's be honest, everyone on both sides of the aisle already knows.

OK?  Just like the torturers at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, The Salt Pit, the Polish intelligence school near Syzmany, somewhere in Rumania, on board ships heavens-knows-where, and elsewhere, and the shrinks who pervert their professions to serve as torturers, aiders and abettors of torture, have nothing to fear from criminal prosecution or professional sanction because they were following Bush's orders.

Just like the band of thieves masquerading as government contractors have nothing to fear from criminal prosecution, because they were following the guidelines set up by the script written by Bush.

Just like corrupt Republican congressmen have nothing to fear from scandal or prosecution, so long as they stay on the team (and don't get too egregiously caught out).

(NB:  I don't know how this all got bold, but I didn't mean for it and can't get it to go away.  Sorry.

Twenty or so years ago, to meet the challenges of the anticipated battlefield against the then-mighty Warsaw Pact, the Army started preaching the concept (I don't want to raise it to the level of "doctrine") of "commander's intent".  The basic idea was that commanders communicated to subordinates the intent of their operation, so in the (likely) event the detailed operations plan came into difficulty and communications broke down, the subordinates could direct their reaction to the changes in the situation so as to accomplish the intended objective.  Think "making sure your football team knows what to do when the play gets broken".  The big driver for this was the accelerated pace of warfare - waiting a half a day or even a couple of hours to straighten things out would leave the organization doing that hopelessly out of the loop (if not blown away) and behind the objective.  This acceleration of pace has also taken place in the news cycle; we have also seen that in this environment bullsh*t is like bindweed (or kudzu, take your pick):  it takes root easily and just won't be eradicated.

We see, therefore, a conspiracy not necessarily of formal agreements, but rather of like-minded people in positions of authority working in a more-or-less coordinated fashion to achieve the objectives Bush has set out.  And flinging bullsh*t all the time to try to get past inconvenient events which might stand between them, and the boss' objectives.  

This ease of lying and bullsh*tting explains (at least to me) part of why the Republican party seems to have no concept that things like perjury and obstruction of justice are crimes.  They come from a perspective in which hitting, moving quickly, and forgetting are essential to dealing with the rapid development of the news cycle, and their fight for eternal Rethug supremacy.  I mean, two or three weeks on, who remembers Scooter Libby and his guilty verdict?

The other part of their ease at lying is their bad character and utter roundheeledness when it comes to power, climbing the ladder, and winning.

It is axiomatic that, in a governmental or similar hierarchical organization:  if the boss disapproves of something, it will stop.  It has now been six years, and the chicanery, criminality, conspiracy and cozening goes on.  Is there anyone out there still having a brain and the facility to use it who thinks anything other than George W. Bush fully approves of and promotes the criminality which his administration is committing?

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is what a country run by a criminal conspiracy looks like, from the inside.*

This is why the other Rethugs are trying to jump ship to save their electoral hides, but may well not be doing so out of fear of the Gonzo-run DoJ coming after them, if they do jump.

And this is why we must, as I wrote last week, stay prepared, calm, cool, and steadfast and continue to dig.  

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* and you were wondering why DoJ went to Court to get a gag order on "DC Madam" Palfrey, to keep her from selling or talking about the customers of her escort service? As TSG notes:  "the identity of Palfrey's D.C. customers would surely be cloaked if the protective order was signed"....

* (E.g., when the word gets out that "Tony says:  no more fires!", trash trucks stop exploding.)

*  the phrase "a country run by a criminal conspiracy" derives from a vignette in one of William Manchester's biographies of Churchill, where he dissects both the Nazi regime in Germany, and the reason(s) behind Churchill's deep antipathy toward it.  Manchester noted one of the sure signs of criminality was, inter alia, that at one time the Reichsmark had seventeen different values, so as to make the books "balance".  To accomplish the regime's goals and still present the facade of regularity and legality, they had to cook the books. Compare that to the conduct of this administration in just about any area and it comes out with the same answer....