Gangsters Organized Politically

A couple things have happened this week that I've decided to include in the same rant: Rep. Tom Delay surrendering, and the fact that G.W. Bush authorized the Valerie Plame leak was made public. What do these things have in common, you might ask. They both fall under the broad (and quite extensive) category of Conservative Corruption.

I'll go start with Mr. Delay, since he made the news first. We're finally getting rid of a corrupt, powerful, evil, conniving legislator. Of course, I'd rather he was going straight to prison, but his day will come. Meanwhile, he's left a legacy that reflects his values (listed above). What worries me is that he actually won the primary election and decided not to run again on his own. What caused him to do that is a mystery to me, because his past behavior has shown that he doesn't care that everyone knows he's a crook. But what's it matter. VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!

What's more serious is that our president thinks, once again, that the law doesn't apply to him. You may remember, more than a year ago now I think, the name of an undercover CIA agent was leaked and all the sudden, she wasn't so undercover anymore. This in itself was suspicious enough, but what's even fishier is that her husband was a former U.S. ambassador who had been appointed to look into Bush's claims that Saddam tried to buy uranium from Nigeria. Needless to say, he didn't find any evidence of such a purchase. Also needless to say, Bush didn't like this, as it painted W. as a liar. Little did this ambassador know that the administration's revenge would come in the form of compromising his wife's safety. From what we now know, it seems Bush authorized such a leak, and Dick Cheney's lackey carried it out. Of course, W denied any knowledge of it, but now that word's out, he's saying he declassified that information and had it made public for reasons not quite clear to me (something about defending pre-war intel, but it just seems like something the mob would do to shut her husband up).

Does the president have the authority to just go around declassifying the names of covert CIA agents. No. This also seems slightly hypocritical, because, last time I checked, the CIA gathered intelligence that is vital to protecting the U.S. from terrorists. And we all know that your and my safety is at the top of the White House's agenda, they use it to justify just about everything after all.

When you add this stuff to even more corrupt republicans, like Rep. Cunningham who took all those bribes in return for steering big defense contracts toward the right people (after resigning in shame, he pled guilty and was sentenced to quite a few years pretty quick), you start to see a pattern. The GOP is not in fact the party with all the morals, at least not the good ones.