It ain't a rainbow, but -

The Republican monolithic facade is beginning to crack at the foundations, weakened by the slow but steady drip of leaks coming from within its own house. The foundations are crumbling, and the once-might monolith of the party of the Contract With America is beginning to list. There is little apprehension on the part of this writer that it will actually crash, but it is apparent that some of its walls have been breached, the party is seriously weakened, and some rats are making their escape already.

Neocons may have been blinded by those gleaming promises of global hegemony, but they aren’t stupid. Earlier this summer, having seen some of the light of harsh reality dawning where all was gleaming wonderfulness before, a couple of leading neocons - William Krystal of The Standard, and Tom Donnely of The American Enterprise Institute - stabbed Donald Rumsfeld in the back, preparatory to fleeing the edifice before all was lost for good. In an op-ed in his rag The Standard, Krystal said that “... Rumsfeld has fouled up everything in Iraq and ought to be fired for his failures...,” thus beginning to distance himself and the rest of his neocon buddies from their ill-conceived and badly executed attempt at global hegemony beginning with the war in Iraq.

Republicans with consciences, and there are some,showed a return to ethical behavior ...

Senate Republicans with consciences – and there are some – showed some return to ethical behavior in the final dash to the congressional holiday break when they sided with Democrats in their refusal to endorse the full reauthorization of the grotesquely named USA Patriot Act, in the face of the threats and ire of Republican Senate leader Bill Frist.

Connecticut Senator Lincoln Chaffe deserves some kind of medal for siding with the Dems in the ongoing battle to block drilling in the ANWAR, which ended in success for environmentalists everywhere.

But the most glaring sign of the times, from no less than the editorial mouthpiece of corporate America (in the final analysis, the only people with juice that really count), is a recent editorial in this month’s Barron’s magazine, a part of the Wall Street Journal’s capitalist propaganda machine. It was written by Thomas G. Donlan, hardly a free-thinking liberal. In their carefully worded piece, they make the case that the Congress ought to investigate this matter and seriously consider either changing the law or report a bill to impeach the president for his patently illegal wire-tapping.

I don’t know about you, but my first New Year’s resolution is that every Republican in Congress immediately takes out a subscription to Barron’s magazine.