Today's first post on the history of democracy

It seems to me that the American Republic and the American Empire are still battling it out. As John at Dymaxion World said:

It's a fitting postscript to the Bush years that the best news I've heard all week is that Obama's Attorney-General 1) Says that waterboarding is torture, 2) even when America does it, and 3) the President can't break the law.

How sad is that, that I'm basically bouncing in my chair clapping like a kid on his birthday because for the first time in 8 years, the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America believes that the government shouldn't break the law???

But as he also says, we'll have to see how far that conviction goes.

Or see driftglass:

Two nights in a row I have seen blood-soaked madmen on my teevee taking victory laps through the imaginary, eight-year history of a fictional America.

Over here in the Real World -- the one they hollowed out, set on fire, looted and left for dead -- things look very different.

Summed up in the illustrated musical version here.