Harry Reid Fiddles While Rome Burns

For ordinary citizens, democracy has become a maddening, hair-rending endeavor. America's house of freedom is in flames and, like a college senior, the fire chief is focused solely on spring break. It figures.

As reported today in the L.A. Times, "Let's not rush into this," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters, noting that the chamber would adjourn next week for spring recess. "When we get back from our break, a decision will have to be made on whether to issue subpoenas to Rove and others." Right!

Perhaps he should have added, "But over break, maybe we can all meet up in Cancun. I'll buy the first round, and we can share a yuck over the wackiness that is D.C."

Yeah, yuck! I know I'm disgusted.

Beginning the day George W. Bush seized office, there's been enough yuck to circle the globe a thousand times starting with Bush's deliberately ignoring warnings from his chief counter-terrorism adviser that AlQueda would strike here in September '01. When the twin towers burned and fell, human beings with no other way out jumped to their deaths on national television, ramping up yuck to a level never before witnessed in America. But Harry Reid was not the fire chief then.

Harry Reid was also not chief when Dick Cheney conspired with big oil to use 9/11 to set Iraq ablaze. He was not in charge when America's own Caligula used the Constitution as kindling to commit arson on habeas corpus and threw in the Geneva Convention to make sure it would go. Reid was not in charge when New Orleans flooded and burned and FEMA ran around and around their emergency vehicles like the Keystone Cops.

Now, with the U.S. Justice Department smoldering as a backdrop, Harry Reid, like the frat boys he should be investigating, all but stands up and declares, "Paaarrrrtttaayyy!"

Sorry, Harry. Americans have been expecting better than that. Americans have been hanging on by a thread and waiting with baited breath for better than that. Americans clearly love America more than does the limited pool of people they have to choose from to represent them.

Mr. Reid owes it to Americans to postpone the spring hoedown and start fighting fire with fire. Democracy has been in flames for so long now that the mountain of empty extinguishers expended by private citizens valiantly trying to extinguish the blaze themselves will soon need to be named.

If Mr. Reid wishes to remain the fire chief of Rome past 2008, he should put his grass toga and SPF 30 back in the drawer and take a lesson from the firefighters of Cottage Grove, MN whose motto "non sibi, sed omnibus" means "not for self but for all."

It's the least a fire chief should do.