"It's hard to imagine how bad it is. You sit at your desk and you know what the facts are, but you can't get them out to the public because the lawyers tell you you can't - or if you can, the noise from the presumption of guilt culture overwhelms the facts."

That may have been true in the Clinton administration, but today’s Republicans have learned the value of the preemptive strike. DeLay’s supporters attack the accuser, buying TV time to condemn the prosecutor. While his lawyer might be telling him to zip his lips, DeLay is happy to blame a vast left wing conspiracy for his troubles. Rove is making a seemingly desperate return to the grand jury, perhaps to “clarify” earlier errors or omissions in the hope that one last spin will create reasonable doubt and avoid an indictment.

Perhaps DeLay and David Safavian will be acquitted, or the charges dismissed. Perhaps Frist and Rove and Scooter Libby will never be charged. They are all presumed innocent, and no writer at this site ever forgets that even people who clearly deserve our scorn are entitled to a fair trial and to the protections of the Bill of Rights.

To the extent that serious accusations of wrongdoing are supported by evidence rather than chatter – a distinction lost on much of the mainstream media during the Clinton years – they nonetheless deserve public scrutiny. And if that scrutiny produces in observers from the left a small measure of satisfaction, a sense of karma, or a reaffirmation that (as Last Night in Little Rock observed here) “what goes around comes around,” the Roves and Frists and DeLays have only themselves to blame. They and their ilk share responsibility for this culture; now they must live in it.