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I started writ­ing this post to point out that the coör­di­nated demands by vir­tu­ally every major nut­case over the New York Times’ reveal­ing the data-mining of bank­ing records via SWIFT—the calls for exe­cu­tion, harass­ment, lynch­ing, etc. — was a clear indi­ca­tion that Karl Rove is no longer a tar­get of Fitzgerald’s inves­ti­ga­tion. The much-vaunted “Fitzmas” is over, and you got a sweater. Huzzah. But then I real­ized that was silly, it sounds like it was cribbed from a uni-dimensional, dystopian sci-fi novel, which really sucks since it’s not fiction.

…sounds like it was cribbed from a uni-dimensional, dystopian sci-fi novel, which really sucks since it’s not fiction…

At any rate, it’s actu­ally kind of humor­ous to watch to Democrats floun­der and the Republicans go insane over the issue. Essentially, the Administration is tread­ing extremely close to fuck­ing with the money with their transaction-tracking pro­gram. I mean, how many rich peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions have their fin­gers in pies they would be embar­rassed to have them in? Monthly dues to the Arse-tickler’s, Faggot Fan Club?¹ A copy of the receipt in the hands of the U.S. Treasury Dept. Wire-transfers to drug-running para­mil­i­taries who are later impli­cated in a string of dead com­mu­nity and union activists? A copy of the receipt in the hands of the U.S. Treasury Dept. You get the picture.

Determining how that makes any sense is a task left to the reader…

So the Republicans have opened the door to allow the Democrats a chance to suck Capital’s dick, because Capital is now aware that the Republicans are wear­ing braces. Therefore, the goal of the smear cam­paign is to state, quite bluntly, that only a trea­so­nous, objec­tively pro-terror com­mu­nist would note the Republicans are wear­ing braces. Determining how that makes any sense is a task left to the reader.

Historically, how­ever, the chances that any of this infor­ma­tion will ever send some­one wealthy, pow­er­ful, and white to pound-me-in-the-ass prison is nil, regard­less of who is in charge. Clinton may have pun­ished the tobacco indus­try for killing his uni­ver­sal health care plan over the cig­a­rette tax hikes (which we got any­ways) with the 90s law­suits, but that’s a far cry from jail time. It appears the Democrats are either unable or unwill­ing to exploit this fis­sure pub­licly, they could have been caught off-guard by the venom directed at the Times, or they could be exploit­ing it pri­vately. I think the party is refus­ing to dis­close it’s motives pub­licly, because the DLC ulti­mately believes it can get it’s col­lege tuition paid for if it does it pri­vately. As the eco­nomic for­tunes of the U.S. decline (as they must in a free-trade envi­ron­ment), the only recourse the state will have against the pissed-off newly-poor are repres­sion and nation­al­ism, so I think the Democrats are wor­ried about giv­ing up this power now, since they’ll likely need it back in a decade or so.

I fully expect the Democrats will half-ass it on the abuse-of-power scan­dals, and will prob­a­bly end up doing what they say they want to do, if allowed: expand­ing the FISA Court again, to allow for “mass-target” war­rants. If so, I’d expect them to pitch it as a “nec­es­sary log­i­cal exten­sion of rov­ing wire­taps,” even though the abil­ity of the FISA court to issue non-FI-related war­rants in the first place is already a pretty broad exten­sion under the PATRIOT Act. Essentially, I think they’ll take another large step towards a com­pletely secret Star Chamber, and call it a check against the Monarchy.