Collective Alzheimers

If theres a bustle in your hedgerow
Don't be alarmed now,
Its just a spring clean for the may queen
And it makes me wonder
--Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin

The Republicans in Washington seem to be suffering from a case of collective early-onset Alzheimers. Forgetfulness is the order of the day. Is there a doctor in the House? Where's Sen. Dr. Frist when you need him? Perhaps he could minister to this collective amnesia.

First, the Defense Intelligence Agency lost a video of the last interrogation session of Jose Padilla, then a declared “enemy combatant” under an order from President Bush, while he was being held in military custody at a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. (The Case of the Missing Movie, MSNBC.)

The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence in one of the U.S. government’s highest-profile terrorism cases was met with claims of incredulity... “This is the kind of thing you hear when you’re litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi,” said John Sifton, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, one of a number of groups that has criticized the U.S. government’s treatment of Padilla. “It is simply not credible that they would have lost this tape. The administration has shown repeatedly they are more interested in covering up abuses than getting to the bottom of whether people were abused.”

Now the missing emails--government business conducted on Republican party accounts in the hopes of evading exposure.

Today we have the Jan. 9, 2006, e-mail message, written by D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned last month as chief of staff to Mr. Gonzales, which ''identified five Bush administration officials, most of them Justice Department employees, whose names were sent to the White House for consideration as possible replacements for prosecutors slated for dismissal.'' This was almost a year before the justices' dismissal in December 2006. The department has repeatedly stated that no successors were selected before the dismissals. In the vernacular--busted.

Could it be sick building syndrome? Perhaps some nefarious mold or mildew in the duct work what's making them fuzzy headed? Maybe the cleanup crew from Walter Reed can offer a pointer or two on how to drive out the rats. Of course, we wouldn't want to empty the chambers.

In the Rangers, we still learn the orders of the original Rogers' Rule for Rangers (1757). One of the cardinal commands is, ''Don't forget nothing.'' I guess the politicoes have a different rulebook, with a corollary: unless it benefits you to do so.