If David Brooks is a reliable indicator of hard core Bush authoritarian sentiment, an important tipping point has been reached. Mr. Brooks has finally discovered that there is no "honor" in the current leadership of the DOJ under Gonzales. What a surprise!
This odd reliance on a sense of "honor" is vitally important to authoritarian mystics like Brooks, because it is their universal antidote to the impulsiveness of the mob and the ineffectiveness of parliamentary government. Without the honorable conduct of those who wield authority, no one is safe.
This is why even deep-dyed Republican prosecutors are turning against the Bush administration, because if even they can be fired at a whim, and the course of government prosecutions is politicized, no one is safe. Even the most vicious criminal gang has cohesion because the gang members believe they are safe from the ugly tactics of the gang. When a gang turns on itself, it disintegrates. This is what appears to be happening to the BushCo gang. More on the implications of this tipping point below:
No one is safe in Congress. With a politicized Justice Department, any member of Congress can be attacked with trumped-up corruption charges. No matter how loyal a Repbulican congressman might be, he or she is one phone call away from investigation and indictment by the Gonzales DOJ.
No one is safe in business. A politicized Justice Department intervened to protect Big Tobacco, but it could just as easily have intervened to inflict punishing damages if Big Tobacco had no contributed enough cash to BuchCo coffers. No business is safe from political extortion.
No on is safe in the military. Officers who challenge BushCo doctrine will be swiftly removed by a politicized Pentagon. Life and death decisions in the field will be decided, ultimately, by political hacks in Karl Rove's "shop" or by rented propagandists at AEI.
No one is safe in foreign countries. The bellicose foreign policy of the United States is now an instrument of domestic politics. This means that any country can be targeted for propaganda defamation, economic sanctions, or military attack, purely for political convenience.
No one is safe in the citizenry. The powers granted to Bush in the post-9/11 hysteria include the ability to designate any American citizen as an "enemy combattant" and to jail, torture, and murder that person with no appeal to the law.
No one is safe under the rule of a despot, and that terrible realization may finally provide the motive for impeachment of Bush and Cheney.