A wish

A wish
: The one thing I hope comes out of the 9/11 commission hearings — besides fixing our intelligence operations and preventing future terrorist attacks, but that’s getting to be besides the point, isn’t it? — is seeing John Ashcroft as a sacrificial lamb.

Oh, I know, the odds are slight — nil, actually. But the man didn’t care enough about terrorism. He runs an agency that all agreed is really f’ed up. He is the poster child for the much-reviled Patriot Act. He’s spending more effort going after boobs than bombs. He is the embodiment of the far right-wing of the Bush administration.

If Bush were running a sane campaign, he’d steal the beat from the commission and announce a sweeping overhaul of intelligence, starting with a new head of Justice. If he were running a sane campaign, he’d play to the center of the country and amputate his far right, getting rid of Ashcroft.

But, of course, he is instead playing to the far right with the litany of issues you already know. So Ashcroft won’t go.

But a citizen can dream, can’t he?