The tipping point of evil

A concerted Administration effort to blow the cover of a covert CIA agent involved in counterproliferation wasn't enough. Lying us into war wasn't enough. Turning the Justice Department into an arm of the Republican party to disenfranchise Democrats wasn't enough.

What will it take to arouse the ire of the American people so that they demand that Nancy Pelosi put impeachment back on the table? How high do the crimes have to get?

How about sending amputees back into combat:

In the blur of smoke and blood after a bomb blew up under his Humvee in Iraq, Sgt. Tawan Williamson looked down at his shredded leg and knew it couldn't be saved. His military career, though, pulled through.

Less than a year after the attack, Williams is running again with a high-tech prosthetic leg and plans to take up a new assignment, probably by the fall, as an Army job counselor and affirmative action officer in Okinawa, Japan.

In an about-face by the Pentagon, the military is putting many more amputees back on active duty — even back into combat, in some cases.

Williamson, a 30-year-old Chicago native who is missing his left leg below the knee and three toes on the other foot, acknowledged that some will be skeptical of a maimed soldier back in uniform.

"But I let my job show for itself," he said. "At this point, I'm done proving. I just get out there and do it."

Previously, a soldier who lost a limb almost automatically received a quick discharge, a disability check and an appointment with the Veterans Administration.

But since the start of the Iraq war, the military has begun holding on to amputees, treating them in rehab programs like the one here at Fort Sam Houston and promising to help them return to active duty if that is what they want.

Well, why not? If you're recruiting criminals and the mentally ill, why not hold onto amputees? After all, it's one less limb they have to get shot off.

Or perhaps spending $592 million dollars to build a palatial embassy in Baghdad, one that will cost over a billion dollars a year to run, as you plan to turn Iraq into the new South Korea?

Or maybe it'll be when they do Norman Podhoretz' bidding and bomb Iran to smithereens?

Or when people start dying of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease because the Administration helped out their rancher friends and vowed to fight all attempts to test all beef cattle?

Or when a child is killed with a gun because the Republicans passed an amendment to an appropirations bill 4 years ago that restricts the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from sharing crime gun tracing data with law enforcement officials and the public.

What's it going to take?