The talking point for the next election: Republicans stand for Treason; Democrats stand for Reason. This was established during a Senate vote this week for an amendment to a homeland security appropriations bill that would deny access to classified material to any federal employee who discloses a covert CIA agent's identity. The bill was defeated, the vote breaking down along straight party lines, 53 to 44. The ruling party — the Ruling Class — has ossified, a sure sign of a government that will soon (but not soon enough!) collapse under the sheer weight of its own bullshit.

First, one undeniable fact: Karl Rove, Pres. Bush's closest advisor — the man on whom Bush has affixed the loving nickname "Turd Blossom" — revealed the identity of an undercover CIA agent. He did this more than two years ago. In fact, in this space on Oct. 16, 2003 ("We See Nothing"), I wrote, "Besides the Big Lie that has, as of this week, cost more than 300 American lives [in Iraq], the loss of Plame's cover may lead to as many as 70 deaths of her 'assets' around the world … The prime suspect in this vindictive act — a felony, perhaps treason — is Karl Rove."

My point is not that I'm so prescient, so far ahead of the pack. Quite the contrary. That is, if a person like me, with a 9-year-old dog and a 4-year-old son competing for my attention in my cramped office picked up on this two years ago, then IT WAS KNOWN ALL OVER THE WORLD. Why all the hoo haw now? Nothing has changed in two years. Rove is no more or less guilty of treason than he was then. Somehow this heinous chapter in our nation's history was allowed to drag out and 1,500 more Americans and 100,000+ more Iraqis have died as a result of this administration's culture of lies.

I've heard the press is really pushing this story because they're angry the White House lied to them. Puh-leeeeeze. The White House press corps would wet their collective pants and melt into a giant collective puddle if Ari or Scott or Condi or Bush ever told them the truth. Had these same pencil-asses been this aggressive four or even two years ago, we'd never be in this mess now.

I think it has more to do with pack mentality, the barking dog syndrome. In Oct. 2003, I was simply a barking dog on an empty cul-de-sac. Now the dogs are out on Pennsylvania Avenue howling like rabid beasts.

So, why is the Republican Party allowing itself to be dragged down with Turd Blossom? According to the Washington Post this week, "The emerging GOP strategy … is to try to undermine those Democrats calling for Rove's ouster, play down Rove's role and wait for President Bush's forthcoming Supreme Court selection to drown out the controversy."

Have you ever read a more cynical sentence in a news story than that last one?

Among those who voted to stand for treason, in the Senate vote cited at the top of this piece, were Republican "moderates" like John McCain, Olympia Snowe, Lincoln Chaffee, Susan Collins, Richard Lugar, Lindsay Graham, etc. "Moderate" Republicans can not keep claiming that they don't side with the lunatic right-wing fringe of their party — the ones who claim Rove as a hero and Bush's war as "spreading democracy" or "defeating terrorism" or whatever happy horseshit they're peddling this week — if they continue to support every initiative, bill and spin the right wing brings to the table.

In the end, I don't want Karl Rove fired. I don't want Rep. Tom DeLay or Rep. Duke Cunningham to resign. I want them all to be on public view for the next year, like grotesque figures in a wax museum, so that Americans can get good and sick of the rot that envelopes the Republican Party. It is as thorough a corruption as has ever been seen in American history, rivaled perhaps only by the Ulysses S. Grant era.

You heard right. I don't want Karl Rove to get a pink slip. I want to see him wearing a pink slip … made from a prison shower curtain. Rush Limbaugh and Robert Novak, his kissing cousins, will be housed in the next cells and Lyndie England brought in for recreation period. This, finally, begs one semi-serious question. If Bush knew or approved of Rove's revealing the CIA agent's name, then he too broke the law. My question: If Bush goes to prison, do Secret Service agents accompany him?

One final curiosity: Has anyone seen Dick Cheney lately? Could he really be Karl Rove? Oh no? Have you ever seen the two of them together in public? I rest my case.

[Cue the Twilight Zone music]