Not such a lame duck(er)

Bush's legacy, I fear, will be viewed largely as the incompetency of a myopic ideologue who oversaw two failed wars and a momentous financial crisis. The truth is much more nefarious than the caricature; the Bush administration has set a dangerous precedence by assuming ultimate authority of the executive branch and employing quasi-legal trickery in justifying villainous torture policy.

Glenn Greenwald on America's conflicting interpretation of justice:

We have less than five percent of the world's population. And yet 25 percent almost of prisoners worldwide are inside the United States. What you have is a two-tiered system of justice where ordinary Americans are subjected to the most merciless criminal justice system in the world. They break the law. The full weight of the criminal justice system comes crashing down upon them. But our political class, the same elites who have imposed that incredibly harsh framework on ordinary Americans, have essentially exempted themselves and the leaders of that political class from the law.

The recently penned bi-partisan Senate Armed Services Committee report linking Bush top administration officials directly to detainee abuse is evidence that Bush administration failures are very much systemic and intentional and not a failure of foresight.

The approach the main stream media has utilized in addressing the question of his legacy has been incongruous with the somber reality. It seems to me as if "lame duck" is not a fitting title for a man with such shoe-evasion skill. The shoe incident and the resulting support for the shoe thrower remind us just how much animosity remains for this President and his besmirched legacy. However, the Senate report has been largely ignored in favor of the vitriolic stories regarding that joke Blagoyevich. Shallow media-induced rancor captivates us while indisputable evidence of war crimes falls on deaf ears-- it's no wonder people throw shoes at our leaders.