Or should it be com­mu­ta­tion watch?  At any rate, my pre­dic­tion that the (almost) former Pres­i­dent would not leave the White House until he had signed papers for him­self and a few friends seems to have been wrong.  As was widely reported, today he com­muted the sen­tences of two border patrol agents who shot an unarmed Mex­i­can drug smug­gler at the Texas border in 2005.  But so far, no sig­na­tures for Scooter or Wolfie or Dick or Rums­feld or himself.  Of course, if a stack like this came through, it would likely include a few more names (Yoo? Adding­ton? Gon­za­lez?), and it prob­a­bly wouldn’t happen until the last minute, while everyone’s busy lis­ten­ing to the (almost) Pres­i­dent give his inau­gu­ra­tion speech.  The sus­pense is killing me.

I begin this, my first post here at DE, by thank­ing Bobby (or Robert P. Baird, as he is some­times called) for asking me to join up.  I’ll do my best not to bore.  

To more press­ing issues: some remark­able inves­ti­ga­tions of our government’s recent excesses are under way as I type.  No doubt many read­ing this post have heard about some of the more eccen­tric recent attempts to pros­e­cute Cheney and/or Bush in small Amer­i­can cities and towns; at least one of these, in South Texas, led to an indict­ment.  These smaller inves­ti­ga­tions are hard to take too seri­ously, espe­cially the one in TX, which was led up by a pros­e­cu­tor regarded even by locals as loopy.  The inves­ti­ga­tions that I think we should take seri­ously are being car­ried out by sanc­tioned gov­ern­men­tal bodies.  It’s not that they are dig­ging up new infor­ma­tion.  It’s that the media tends to wait for the author­i­ties to give them the wink and nod, and they’re now doing so, both at home and in allied coun­tries like Spain and Ger­many.