He wanted to talk about health-care reform this week.  Everyone outside of the secret Bush Regime, however, wanted to hear about Dead Eye Dick. It's hard to interest reporters in complex issues when there's a simple, dramatic story to tell.  And Bush's agenda languished.

Every Republican in the House and 14 Republican senators will have their names on the ballot this November, while the president's name will only go into the history books, but never again on a ballot.  The GOP natives are getting restless:
o        Hence the growing signs of indiscipline among Bus***e mindlessly loyal foot soldiers;
o        This week, House Republicans issued a damning assessment of the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina;
o        Other Republicans are expressing doubts about the legality of Mr Bush's “unwarranted” wiretapping program for American citizens;
o        Grumbling is growing over his stubborn refusal to say more about White House contacts with Jack Abramoff, a crooked lobbyist;
o        And fresh embarrassments keep flowing from Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the prosecution of Mr. Cheney's former chief of staff.

Katrina is perhaps the most immediately damaging. A harsh mistress of discipline, Katrina unmasked the incompetence and cronyism of this regime for the entire world to see.  At the end of the day, major blame ends up with the administration.
o        The president was briefed too late about the broken levee;
o        The president acted too late to alleviate the resulting calamity;
o        Michael Chertoff, Bush's homeland-security chief crony appointment, is roundly criticized.

As if that were not bad enough, the Senate heard this week of massive waste and fraud in the disbursal of disaster-relief funds. The Department of Homeland Security's inspector-general mentioned $900 Million spent on 26,000 mobile homes for evacuees.  Indeed, nearly 11,000 are now sinking in the mud in Hope, Arkansas.

Moreover, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that it was laughably easy to pose as a flood victim and finagle a $2,000 check intended to keep newly-homeless families fed.  One couple submitted 23 applications using 21 bogus Social Security numbers and netted $46,000.  Some of the evacuees who received $2,000 debit cards used them to buy, for example:
o        a $1,300 pistol from Elliot's Gun Shop in Jefferson, Louisiana
o        a $400 massage at the “Swedish Institute” in Irving, Texas
… and various other things “that did not appear necessary to satisfy immediate emergency needs”, as the GAO put it without cracking a smile.

On the warrantless wiretapping front, Bush can safely ignore Democratic calls for his impeachment, at least until November. But he has to pay attention to Republican grumbles.
o        Heather Wilson, a Republican representative from New Mexico who faces a tricky re-election battle this year, has called for a congressional inquiry.
o        Heavyweight Republican senators such as John McCain and Arlen Specter have raised sharp questions.

The White House has responded with vigorous lobbying and a propaganda blitz. Testimony by Bush apologists has strongly intimated that the wiretapping of Americans, had it existed before September 11th 2001, would probably have netted some of the hijackers.  And belatedly, in a grudging bow to mounting pressures, lawmakers are being briefed more thoroughly on how the system works.

It is far from clear to many Republicans as well as the majority of Americans that the president has the authority, as he claims, to spy on American citizens at his sole discretion with no modicum of oversight.  The sheer size of the government's list of possible terrorists and their associates—it includes 325,000 names, according to the Washington Post— suggests a dragnet for purposes other than the “war on terrorism”.

And then there is this catch twenty-two for Dubya.  Some Republicans want to tweak the law to give him the authority he says he needs. But that would imply that he didn't have it beforehand, and therefore has been breaking the law. Dogone Karl!  Karl?  Karl, where are you?

On another front, two prosecutions continue to cause presidential headaches.
o        A photograph of Bush and Jack Abramoff, who has admitted to conspiring to bribe politicians, was published in the latest issue of Time magazine.
o        Worse, Mr. Abramoff boasted that Bush knew him well enough to ask about his children.
o        And, Mr. Abramoff claims that he had close contacts with Karl Rove, Bush's main political adviser.

Potentially more worrisome for the Bus***e Regime is that Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice in a case concerning the leaking of a CIA operative's name, has told investigators that his bosses had instructed him to leak information from an intelligence report about Iraq.

Meanwhile, Bush's hobby war in Iraq and America’s reputation abroad are being undone by two other familiar names; Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

 Abu Ghraib is back.   On February 15th, an Australian television channel broadcast previously suppressed pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused at the Abu Ghraib jail in 2003. The pictures, whose publication the Pentagon had stopped in America, showed half a dozen corpses, and some gruesome variations on the kinds of abuse for which eight American guards have already been jailed. While the American media is reluctant to show the images, they cannot be supressed in the rest of the world.  They have given an old scandal new life in much of the rest of the world.

Guantánamo Bay is also back in the news. The United Nations Human Rights Commission is expected to release a report calling for the immediate closure of GTMO, and the prosecution of all officials responsible for the alleged torture of detainees there.

Many of the detainees, held for years without any legal recourse, are held on flimsy evidence, hearsay and “information” squeezed out of other detainees after lengthy interrogation.  An investigation by the non-partisan National Journal concluded that “some, perhaps many, are guilty only of being foreigners in Afghanistan or Pakistan at the wrong time.”

Mr. Bush received some distraction from his difficulties from an unlikely source.   ABC News aired tapes purporting to be of the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, discussing ways terrorists might attack America with weapons of mass destruction.

Thanks Saddam old buddy.  George needs all the distractions he can get.  Time for a lengthy vacation at Crawford?