More on why isn't Bush in jail ...

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, here is yet another blogger voicing some of the same concerns I have. The blog post, written by Eric Alterman and circulated by Center for American Progress, points out the media's culpability in what is merely the latest Bush administration scandal.

The most important line in his piece follows, what Alterman calls "a mainstream media mea culpa that is both welcome and instructive":

This admission once again blames the Bush administration for “poorly executed acts” rather than its standard operating procedure, which is deliberate deception in the service of ideological obsession. (emphasis mine)

I understand why the broadcast and cable media behave the way they do -- greed. The five CEO's who profit when there is an administration like Bush & Company have no vested interest in serving the public interest. The tax breaks and other incentives given to them by this administration have made the CEO'S of these corporations very wealthy. Bush calls them his base.

And I'm certain this is exactly what Ronald Regan had in mind when he deregulated the broadcast industry back in the 1980's.

Whatever its final outcome, I suppose the Bushites should congratulate themselves for getting away with it this long, and the rest of us who care about the continued functioning of our democracy should be grateful that we still have newspapers and we now have blogs. Because if all we had were television stations, well—as the playwright Tom Stoppard has written, “No matter how imperfect things are, if you’ve got a free press, everything is correctable. Without it, everything is concealable.” (emphasis mine)

But a free press only works if the press itself works. And altogether too often, broadcast and cable prefer to look the other way.

There is a protection mechanism written into our Constitution to protect "We the people" from this -- impeachment. I fear, however, that it will take more courage than our current leaders possess.