As this "Daily Show" segment ably displays, Alberto Gonzales testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee was a calculated effort to convey the impression that he was and is too stupid to know what was going on in his department. The object was to feign greater stupidity than that which Gonzales actually suffers, in order to continue to continue to stonewall Congress on its desire to investigate bush II's attempt to turn the Justice Department into his own personal weapon against his enemies and to keep it from prosecuting his friends.

Gonzales is not a particularly gifted fellow, but he's not as brazenly stupid as he affected in that public display. But if he is going to put on such a show to obscure the illegal actions of himself and the administration he serves, the fall-out from this public profession of gigantic stupidity and incompetence should not be easy to avoid.

The fall-out, as John Oliver puts it, must be highly personal, for Gonzales has disgraced himself. I paraphrase:

"Could you do that John [Stewart]? An educated man with self-respect; children you have to put to bed at night; a wife, whose love you want to deserve, a community ... [etc., ]"

Well, it was gratfiying to see Democratic Congressperson Maxine Waters treat Gonzales as the absolute idiot he so happily pretended to be, and to watch the asshole bristle under her scorn.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/05/10/what-do-you-know/

This is how Gonzales should be treated from here on out. "You want to play this game? We'll play this game. You will be humiliated and derided each and every time that you appear before us. This is the price you pay for attempting to disguise your crimes with an aura of childish ignorance."

Now for the "stuff" section.

The 5 Muslim men recently arrested for their inane plot to attack an army base, has got both sides of the debate on the "War on Terror" [that is; the stupid, right-wing, war mongering side and everybody else] quite excited.

To the morons, this is proof that all Muslim Americans are enemies of the state, and some fascists are even advocating mandatory tracking collars for them.

To the people with half a brain, this puts the lie to bush II's stupid and callous "turn Iraq into a charnel house so that we can fight our enemies there instead of in America" policy. It also demonstrates the effectiveness of ordinary police work in protecting the country from terrorism.

I obviously concur with what the people with at least half-a-brain are saying, but I'd just like to add that I don't see these five men as being indicative of anything all that frightening.

In an environment where they and their co-religionists are assaulted, scorned, insulted, attacked, raped, robbed, killed, it isn't all that odd that a few more headstrong individuals among a people numbering in the milions, are going to attempt to lash out.

But furthermore, these fellows, like the many young men arrested in Toronto for attempting to buy fertilizer from police informants, do not appear as if they would have done more beyond blowing smoke on the internet and in private conversations, were it not for the presence of agents goading them on and making the tools for their fantasies available. And even if they had gotten their weapons, they don't appear to have been very intelligent about the use they'd put them to.

This is a disturbing story, but it is not an earth-shattering one.