Well, well.  What have we learned?

1. Patrick Fitzgerald is afraid of nobody, and he got convictions on all of them.  George Ryan.  Connie Black.  Scooter Libby (of a sort). If I were Richard M. Daley, Mayor, I would set up a hotline to his lawyers, pronto.

2. AG Lisa Madigan was just on teevee, saying that she is willing, as a last resort, to go to the Illinois Supreme Court to have them declare Blagojevich incapable of office. He is certainly on borrowed time, and even that is running short.

3. Nobody is safe. Even Barack Obama needs to sweat. Any call that he has ever made to The Man With The Hair That Dare Not Speak Its Name will be scrutinized. This is the new birth certificate, friends.

4. Tomorrow will bring fresh hell. But it will be hard to have that news be as downright hilarious as today’s.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al are apparently throwing in the towel on their not-trials, and going to confess to helming the 9/11 attacks:

Five men charged with plotting the Sept. 11 attacks told a military judge Monday that they want to immediately confess at their war-crimes tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, setting up likely guilty pleas and their possible executions.

The five said they decided to abandon all efforts to defend themselves against the capital charges on Nov. 4, the day Barack Obama was elected to the White House. It was as if they wanted to rush toward convictions before Obama — who has vowed to end the war-crimes trials and close Guantanamo — takes office.

I’m not getting this. If KSL and the others are seeking to be put to the needle before Dubya leaves, then it’s clear that they have learned nothing about the judicial system — the last meal takes months to cook, even with all appeals dropped.

Maybe they recognize the power of Barry to (at least) paper-over the divisions between U.S. America and the rest of the world. Maybe they want to take the heat off their pals, now radicalized by the not-so-judicial treatment of the feds. I dunno.

Barry, on MTP this morning:

“You know, the days of just pork coming out of Congress as a strategy, those days are over.”

Everyone who honestly believes that, raise your hands. Not all at once.

The only question is whether Black Eagle keep the rush for pork to sub-Wal*Mart levels. I reckon it is fifty-fifty.

(Mind, however, that I’m all for the massage seats on CTA buses and trains. Thanks, American Taxpayer!)

The people who have given us (ahem) Bratz dolls have performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Score one for the good guys, I guess. There’s other focus-group garbage out there, of course, but this line of crap was particularly odious.

Really: what is it about some most people and their consuming? The connection between head and wallet seems to be switched off in millions of us, even after years of experience. I would have to think that there would be some sort of special shame to those who are getting bill collection notices on credit cards, on which they purchased however much on Bratz gear.

(And, oh hey, did you guys hear that some guy was trampled at a Wal-Mart last oh of course you heard about it my God it was third-story behind Mumbai and MP-thrown-in-the-slam over in England for Christ’s sake way to embarass ourselves yet again.)

Oh, David Foster. You are just too cute for words.

With Celine Dion, we were selling 25 million records a pop. Pop stands for popular. It means we’re plugging into the masses. So all the hipsters that are selling 300,000 [copies] and they’re on [a rock station] and all that … it’s great. And I like that kind of music, but so what? They’re not making any money. And it is about making money, too, right?

Listen: I was in a club in London this week, on suggestion of a friendly clerk at a Notting Hill record store. There was a band from Perth called The Snowmen. They may not have been terribly talented, but they showed more pure emotion in a one-hour set than David Foster has ever genuinely felt in his entire life.

And this is not rare — I’ve been to clubs in San Francisco, Chicago, D.C., etc. It’s not made up, pre-packaged crap, or a focus-grouped profit-oriented angle. It’s real, honest entertainment.

So they aren’t swimming in it. Big deal. Foster should get himself to an indie show and take notes. Pronto.

The other big story in England right now, besides the Mumbai bombings, is the fallout from the arrest of the shadow minister for immigration for making public information that was leaked to him by a source within the government. The cause was, basically, that the MP was releasing official secrets.  

This is officially a big deal. It’s the equivalent of having a Member of Congress hauled in for something other than a gay sex scandal. And, apparently, it had the tacit approval of the Speaker — who has, historically, had the duty to protect the privileges of MPs from stuff like random trips to the gaol by the monarch. (Speaking of whom: the Queen’s Speech is tomorrow, which may be disrupted in some way by Conservative MPs causing some sort of ruckus. What a Conservative ruckus looks like is beyond my imagination — and I’m not counting the Miami “Brooks Brothers Riot” featuring ex-Rep. John Sweeney (R-Union College Frathouse), which I classify as a “stupid ruckus.”)

You know, it is so great to see the wingnuts go completely off the deep end. It is just killing them to see the Inadequate Black Male taking hold of the reins. Killing them.

Anyway: here’s the end of the road. They are praising Sarah Palin for her “passionate, hopeful and articulate [yes, that’s right, articulate] advocacy” in a Thanksgiving ad. The amount of joy I get in watching this pathetic display is only heightened by the source: “Our Country Deserves Better PAC.”

Ladies and gentlemen: I give you the best political ad ever made.