Did you hear that Republicans in Congress called an exceptional recess for the entire month of January because they wanted to give Tom DeLay a chance to resolve his legal problems in Texas (that happen to involve his having committed crimes against democracy)?

They obviously are not taking less or no pay or they would never have gathered the needed votes to approve the recess. For every Congressperson or Senator who came to office independently wealthy, there are fifty for whom this position, economically, is the highest they have ever and will ever reach, so it isn’t as if they would approve an unpaid recess to support an effective advocate who was so effective because he was massively dishonest and is about to pay the legal consequences.

This Bush group just doesn’t know where to stop protecting us, because according to them, they are doing a perfect job of it. Yet the Homeland Security Department has just announced a plan that in the event of an attack with radioactive fallout, the government should consider allowing people to reoccupy contaminated land and buildings even if they would be exposed to radiation at a level double what nuclear plant workers could legally receive. Like you’ve never noticed that nuclear plant workers wear head to toe heavy-duty protective gear.

First off, all the money spent on the invasion of Iraq should have been spent in better protecting us against the eventuality of a nuclear attack, for example. Largely because of the war, Bush has been too distracted to take a really strong-arm approach to getting the countries of the ex Soviet Union to secure their nuclear sites and to allow U.S. observers to guard them 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.

The thing is, to get cooperation like that with a foreign country, you need to engage in nuanced diplomacy. Shock and awe just won’t cut the mustard, though they can leave a place devastated. Bush’s ability to think he is liberating people by turning their once prosperous country into a third world basket case is uncanny.

We don’t know for sure that anybody will ever be successful in mounting a nuclear attack within our borders. But even more frightening than the potential for such an attack is the fact that our leaders do not mind letting our enemies know that we are completely without sufficient plan of what to do in the event of such an attack.