We're Gonna Need a Bigger Roost

Josh Marshall pointed to this TV news segment out of Pittsburgh that illustrates the U.S. Attorney scandal's potential to bring virtually every federal prosecution of a Democrat during the last six years under a cloud of suspicion.

Two things:

First, listen for the reporter's Freudian slip in the first few seconds of the segment. I wonder which side of the barricades he's on?

Then, consider just how big a roost we're going to need to accommodate the all of chickens that are en route home. This is what happens when you run a government like a mob family. Slowly but surely, people figure out that everything the family touches is tainted. The problem is that in this case, it's not some bar making protection payoffs or garbage hauler knocking off rivals over a route that are tainted; it's our national institutions. As every scandal has unfolded, we've learned to distrust another one: the Supreme Court (Bush v. Gore), the media (the run-up to Iraq), FEMA (after Katrina), and now the U.S. Attorney's office. The difference this time is that people actually get who is responsible. This is what I meant last night when I said, "It's Over." And maybe because they understand this, Americans won't just write off these institutions, but rather acknowledge that they were destroyed by design and that oversight is the way to hold the destroyers accountable and make sure it never happens again.