It’s ironic that the suicides of three inmates at the Guantanamo Gulag is causing the heat to be turned up a little on the Bush gang about its practice of rounding people up and locking them up indefinitely without any charges. It’s ironic, because Bush tells us that these are people who were anxious to commit suicide in the name of Allah, so long as they could take a few infidels with them.

The official response to the story was shockingly callous, even for the Bush gang. It was something like, "What’s the big deal? People commit suicide in jail all the time." In response to louder demands that the prison be closed, The guy who thinks he’s the President reassured us that some of the prisoners there are dangers to society. I took that as a tacit admission that some of the prisoners at Guantanamo are not terrorists, just collateral damage.

A lot of people, a majority I’d bet, believe that the U.S. government should do something with those guys locked up in Cuba, like charge ‘em with a crime or let ‘em go, but no one has figured out how to stop the Bush gang from doing anything it cares to do and thumbing its collective nose at the people. I, for one, can’t lose the feeling that it’s just a matter of time before Americans begin to disappear without charges or any legal rights.

Speaking of charges, Karl Rove looked relieved to learn that none will be filed against against him in the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson events. That’s the word from the federal prosecutor, and that means no one higher up on the food chain than Dick Cheney’s assistant named Scooter will take this fall. Rove is expected to be the star witness in pinning all the blame on Scooter.

Tom DeLay apparently has been permanently delayed. He previously had resigned as majority leader of the House after getting caught being a bit too close to the pocketbook of Jack Abramoff. Now DeLay has resigned his seat in Congress, with a resignation speech that blistered his political opponents. Where were these brave Democrats when we needed them to oppose an undeclared war? The Bushwhacker’s conduct in office–the war, the bribery scandals lapping at the beaches of the White House, even Bush’s remoteness smirky condescension toward the masses–has created a situation where the Democrats ought to be able to walk backwards into controlling Congress in the midterm elections, but they probably won’t. The Democrats who have chairs in the Capitol or are trying to get one are divided on the war. If they can’t get it together, we’re looking at two more years of the same.

The Bush gang was whooping it up about dropping a couple of bombs on al-Zaquawi, killing him and everybody else in the building. These people think that Iraq is just like the OK Corral. They don’t understand that murdering one high ranking vicious bully won’t change a thing. Maybe they understand but don’t really care; it was just a lot of vicarious fun from thousands of miles away. They certainly don’t understand that killing one guy is like shooting an elephant with a BB gun. It doesn’t stop the enormous creature, but it sure pisses him off. Expect retaliation.

On to lighter things. In gardening news, the backyard gardener is in the clear, so far, but a woman in Sacramento received a citation demanding that she pay a fine for growing vegetables in her front yard. The city says it’s okay to pave your from yard, fill it with atrocious statuary, or even let everything green just die, but you can’t grow your food there. Then there’s the 14-acre community garden in a warehouse district of Los Angeles where people have grown food for almost 15 years. Most of that time, the title was held by the local Food Bank, but a previous owner successfully sued to get it back. Now, he wants to sell the land for another warehouse. A good old fashioned LA protest with movie stars and such followed, and now the cops are helping evict the gardeners.

I’ve long believed that genetic engineering of crops isn’t so much a misguided effort to improve the food supply as it is part of Monsanto’s desire to control the world’s food supply and reap the profits promised by doing so. I’ve heard stories of farmers being successfully sued by Monsanto after seed from neighboring property migrated and sprouted without invitation. But I’ve also smugly believed that I’m a step ahead by growing my own. Stories like this shake my confidence.

The Dixie Chicks are sitting at the top of the charts with their latest recording, seemingly turning the outrage about some anti-Bush remarks the Chicks made into a huge success story. There’s no such thing as bad publicity. But despite the number one album, they’re having problems selling concert tickets in the south and the mid-west. Advertisers are threatening to withhold their business from radio stations which play the Chicks, and the radio stations are complying. This band has always aimed its music and its promotion directly at the mainstream country music market, a market that presumably includes the people who are mad at the Chicks for their politics. So who’s buying all those albums when they aren’t even hearing it on the radio?