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Thursday, November 27, 2008

Hide and seek

They have finally gotten the goods on the outgoing lame duck leader. While acting as caretaker of his nation until early next year, he now must endure personal humiliation based on allegations that he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

In a scheme reminiscent of the one unhatched in the Producers, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is facing charges that he fraudulently billed the same flights to multiple entities on numerous occasions between 2002 and 2006. During the period in which he served as mayor of Jerusalem, trade minister and deputy minister of Israel, Olmert was apparently stuffing his pockets with these overly generous reimbursements.

After 8 years of George W. Bush, could we not have uncovered some wrongdoing on his part of at least such magnitude? Couldn't we have given Bush a going away present handed to him by a Federal officer?

Forget his complicity in human rights violations. Don't investigate his role in making the oil companies richer than almost any country in the world. Don't analyze if he broke any laws regarding the deregulation disaster. Just find something in his political garbage that could take him down. If Al Capone was sent away for tax evasion, there must be one misstep in the past of President Bush that could have made him run for cover during his presidency.

We are a nation that almost forced a President out of office (and into the arms of Federal prosecutors) for being less than forthright about an embarassing liaison. Years before that, we bid adieu to a sitting President for his participation in a scheme to spy on his political enemies, and his failed attempts to cover up his involvement. And yet, we are less than 2 months from having our 43rd President walk out the door relatively unscathed.

How did President Bush avoid such a fate? Where were we looking?

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