Isis Left

The long reign of error is over.

They are gone; the whole stinking cabal that reared their ugly heads in Nov. 2000.

Jeb is termed out as Florida’s governor. Katherine Harris crashed and burned in her ridiculous run for the Senate, abandoned and betrayed by the brothers Bush.

Richard Pombo, declared enemy of the Endangered Species Act, is gone.

Donald Rumsfeld, for a time the most powerful man in America, is suddenly gone.

A New York congressman named Sweeney who organized the Republican brownshirt battalions that intimidated the Dade County election board in 2000 and prevented a recount, lost his seat.

Tom Delay, of course, was run out of town a while ago, the purest symbol of Republican arrogance in power.

The president swings like a scarecrow hanging from a leafless November tree. The Democrats (if the media has been reticent to cast it in such glorious terms) ran the table, shut them out, stunned the country, seized power in a veritable revolution at the ballot box.

The party has put forth the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives in the history of this country, putting its progressive money where its progressive mouth is, passing real power over and into the feminine sphere.

Isis Left.

It took some time, but the American people came around to the same devalued opinion “looney leftists” had of Bush from the very beginning.

And they owe us an apology (though we're not holding our breath).

It’s all good, very good.

But it must be remembered that the stinking cabal stayed a long time and did many, many things that struck their fancy.

Much of it was noxious to our fragile democracy and much suffering has been borne throughout the world, but that fragile democracy held out and, in fact, turned them out.

In the end, the greatest joy is not in a hopeful yelp for the future, but the deep sigh of relief you can sense from New Zealand to Lapland.

There is much to be done, but more to be undone.

No more votes for torture. No more votes for domestic spying. No more votes for "Christian" judges. No more wars without provocation. No more medieval projects launched with an okay from the man upstairs.

Hell, this damn democracy still works.