While Rove Burns

Well, it looks like Karl is still on the hot seat--good. Couldn't happen to a more deserving SOB. And given Karl's position as the "brain" of the GOP, his descent is all the sweeter (and probably explains the increasingly desperate attempts to protect him at all costs. Fair warning: the link is to a GOP memo, and I can't guarantee that reading it won't make you smash your computer monitor with a brick).

The big blogs have all sorts of stuff to look at, from the memo above to Faux News Whore John Gibson's argument that Rove deserves a commendation for, um, whatever. Lesser lights are taking aim at Joe Wilson, of course, essentially arguing that HE outed his wife by acknowledging his marital status or occasionally venturing out in public with her.

But while it sure is fun to observe what I hope is the Rove political death watch, overseas a death watch of a different sort is sadly playing out:

Twenty-seven people, many of them children, were killed by a suicide truck bomb today as the children gathered around an Army vehicle where troops were handing out chocolates and other gifts.

The blast was so powerful it set a nearby house on fire.

The attack, which killed an American soldier and wounded three others, occurred about 10:50 a.m. in east Baghdad, according to the United States military.

And while nutjobs with car bombs are killing Iraqi children, Iraqi "police" are dishing it out to adults:

Iraq's widely feared police commandos were struggling on Tuesday to explain how at least 10 Sunni Arab men and youths, one only 17, suffocated after a commando unit seized them from a hospital emergency ward and locked them in a police van in summer temperatures exceeding 110 degrees.

The article goes on to note that many of the commandos are veterans of Saddam Hussein's army, police, and/or intelligence units--and are quite comfortable with what for them is the old fashioned way. In other words, meet the new boss, same as the old.

Oh, and I was noticing something the other day--it seems as if, just as the old "if they're dead, they're VC" has been modernized for the new century, I've detected a similar update on an expression from that time. "Light at the end of the tunnel" is now "making progress." I just don't know how much more progress we--or the Iraqi people--can stand.