I'm not very familiar with Scripps-Howard columnist Bonnie Erbe. I never watched her PBS series "To The Contrary" because even if all the participants were women it was still a bunch of pundits shouting at one another--call it "The McLaughlin View."
But Google News tipped me today to a great column Erbe wrote about the Bush Administration's recent Justice Department massacre.
What do George W. Bush and Muhammadu Buhari have in common? More and more as time goes on, it seems. Twenty-two years ago Buhari enjoyed brief tenure as Nigeria's dictator by rising to power amidst a failing economy, widespread political corruption, and violent civil unrest, which caused the collapse of that country's so-called Second Republic. Buhari staged a military coup and imposed draconian measures on his nation, punishing those associated with the just-destroyed civilian government, curtailing press freedoms and subordinating the judiciary to the military.
President Bush has not yet subordinated our judiciary to the military, but the more we learn about U.S. attorneys fired for failing to succumb to Justice Department and congressional political pressure, the more the Bush administration looks like the tawdry, third world, small-time dictatorship its opponents accuse it of being.
Try as the administration might to explain away the firing of eight United States attorneys, there is only one explanation for their being dispensed with: they didn't succumb to political pressure to do the king's bidding.
At least Erbe knows which 18th-Century George most resembles: not Washington but William Frederick.
