Snakes on a Plame

Where is St. Patrick now that we need him?

One of the legendary saint's big claims to fame -- other than eventually becoming the nominal excuse for what a friend of mine once called "Mardi Gras for red-haired people with freckles," of course -- is that he is said to have chased all the snakes out of Ireland way back when.

Too bad he's not around today, because we could sure use somebody to chase all the snakes out of Washington. Our own national Babylon-on-the-Potomac is heavily over-infested with them these days, too.

Snakes to the left of us, snakes to the right of us. You can't cross the Mall in D.C. anymore without stepping over (or, preferably, on) some scaly serpent. You can't hit a K Street lobbyist with a wad of hundreds without staring some spineless viper right in the eyes.

And if you happen to work for the VP's office or the DOJ, well, you'll have to look straight up just to watch one of those nasty aspies slither on by over your head. The place really is crawling with snakes, especially after the last six years or so. Those nine guys in the black robes couldn't figure out how to count votes, but they were still adders anyway.

Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes? We hate snakes.

True, the serpent infestation in the people's colony of D.C. is nothing new. From Wilbur Mills to Mark Foley and all punters in between, Beltway-bounded pols and pundits have a long history of wrestling with the snakes in their heads (and in their beds) by taking a page from W. C. Fields' playbook: "I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy."

But during the imperialistic neocons' long reign of error in Washington, the viper surplus has reached new heights -- or, rather, new lows. With serpent-centric slitherers like Dick "Ready, fire, aim!" Cheney calling the shots, more sneaky snakes dared to crawl out from under their rocks during the B-43 years than had ever been seen before.

They tried to lay claim to Lincolnesque stature by rattling their sabers and condemning all who opposed their reckless militarism as treasonous modern-day Copperheads -- conveniently forgetting, of course, that not only is it impossible to stand as tall as he did while you're crawling around on your belly in the grass, but he's still the one who's got his own copper head on the penny today while they won't be worth a wooden nickel tomorrow.

While claiming to be killing for the sake of peace and supporting the troops by sending them off to die in the desert, the serpents in charge forgot the lessons of another pointless war they'd barely managed to slither their way out of less than 40 years before. Those who will not learn from the past are condemned to be defeated by it.

And in the eyes of history, they're going to be seen as a particularly nasty kind of venal venom merchant that Ambrose Bierce described so well: "ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living."

For a while, it appeared as though the vipertisan publicans had managed to sink their fangs into the Constitution so deeply that they could never be removed. But times do change, and now it looks like there finally might be some light at the end of the scandals. Investigations are underway, and it doesn't look so good for Team Serpent right now.

Though the forked-tongued snake-oil salesmen in the White House and the Pentagon tried mighty hard to hide their military incompetence under a rock, not to mention under Iraq, the facts coming out of Capitol Hill these days have turned their duplicitious don't-asp-don't-tell policies so far around on itself that it's biting them on their own scaly tails now.

Look at Libby last month. Busted. Look at Gonzales this month. Busted. Look at Cheney. (Just don't look at him too long, or you'll turn to stone.) Then look at Valerie Plame this past week -- the very antithesis of busted, not to mention the cool, calm, carefully-coifed antithesis of Medusa too. The way she faced those vipers down brings to mind Harriet Tubman's oft-quoted adage: "Never wound a snake, kill it."

It appears that since taking back the legislature, the public-servant shephards of We-the-Sheeple seem to have finally ganged up to meet the wolves head-on. The other shoe has dropped, the game is afoot, the worms have turned, the mongeese have mustered, and the snakes are on the run. (And the metaphors are mangled, too. Boo, hiss.)

So do we still need to find a new St. Patrick to banish the slithering serpents from the swamplands of Washington for us? Maybe not so much now. I mean, it's not like Patrick Leahy is running around in a green surplice waving a clover to remind us of the holy three branches of government. He's a senator, not a saintator.

But you can bet that when Karl Rove finally has to stand there in front of Leahy and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he'll probably be praying to God for a get-out-jail-free card anyway.

And as for the smirker-in-chief, the one who pretends that he's so conveniently clueless that he can't find his own asp with both hands and a GPS receiver? He'll be hoping that he can get out of office and go back to his desert rocks with his scaly skin intact.

And when that happens, my friends, it'll be only fitting that we should all gather round and raise our stout-filled glasses in a brogue-toned toast to the old Irish monk himself:

"St. Patrick was a gentleman, who thru strategy and stealth
Drove all the snakes from Ireland, here's a toasting his health.
But not too many, lest you lose yourself and then
You forget the good St. Patrick, and see those snakes again."

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