Setting up the Two-dude Defense. Anne-Marie Cusac looks at the implications of a Bush proposal to pass control and operations of government services to private corporations.

The idea is bad in all the ways Cusac says it is, but it also would lay the tracks for an underground railroad around laws against govenmental misconduct but divorcing responsibility from action. It fobs off guilt.

It would create a synthetic buffer between elected officials and the crimes committed by and for them.

Lawyers affectionately call it the Two-dude Defense: "It wasn't me. It was this other dude."

Whenever an administration is caught red-handed perpetrating some peccadillo, subcontracting the deed would simplify passing the buck. "It wasn't me. It wasn't even my department."

All in all it's another example of the radical Bush Crowd trying to dismantle government, and establishing profit centers while they're at it..

Neocons indeed. Astute Dennis Hans traces/speculates Niger uranium forgeries back to their lair, which, come to think of it, is an anagram for "liar."

Didn't Michael Keaton and Henry Winkler make a movie of this?

Two morgue attendants in Zimbabwe were arrested for renting corpses to distraught motorists who used hem to get preferential positioning in mile-long fuel queues.

California commuters said to be eyeing adapting scam for access to express lanes. San Francisco diners could try this gambit to inflate the size of their party for quicker seating at certain popular restaurants.

New Yorkers rumored to be looking to use similar ploy to cut in front of ticket-buyer lines at movie heaters. Proposed slogan: "Twice the price, but half the wait."