Where's Pico?

You might well ask.

Pico's been in a really bad mood about the banality of the debate surrounding this race for president, for one thing.

Consider: Governor Mitt Broomstick has declared that Guantanamo is not a national embarassment but rather is a monument to America's determination, and that if elected, he would double it. He opines that that "we" don't want to give terrorists access to lawyers.

I'm not a lawyer, and I'd like to think that a rich former governor running for president has access to better lawyers than I do, but I gotta say, whattya mean "we," white man?

"We" don't want to give terrorists access to lawyers? What happened to "innocent before proved guilty", or, is he saying that if you're charged with "terrorism," all bets are off? If so, given this administration's boundless expansion of the term, shouldn't we all now be rioting in the streets? Haven't we seen that "terrorists" include Quaker ladies opposed to the war and anti-Bush protesters in T-shirts? What's next? Writers on strike and people who drive Priuses? Don't laugh. Anyone who presumes to question the omniscience of a Bush or cut into his profits is bound to be pretty high up the list. It's looking like we can all kiss our attorneys farewell, but I think we knew that when we discovered the illegal wiretapping and the detention center contracts, when "rendition" entered the mainstream vocabulary.

After all, it's just a step from "don't need no stinkin' lawyers" to a lynch mob. If a person who's charged isn't innocent until proved guilty, why bother with judges and juries at all? (Like at Gitmo.) If, as Governor Mitt believes, detention is a synonym for conviction -- which it is, absent habeas corpus, then the Constitution is "just a goddamned piece of paper." Where have I heard that before?

Like most Republicans, Romney isn't big on constitutional due process. But Jeeeebus, wouldn't you think Wolf would have the gray matter to point that out? To ask the questions that expose his blithe dismissal of the one thing that makes us all Americans? That Constitution wasn't written only for US citizens. It was written for all who come under the scrutiny of our system of justice, because its authors had close personal knowledge of life under less humane and enlightened systems.

But that was before the Age of Britney. That was back when people took liberty and their vote quite seriously.