Bad freakin' luck

When the Republicans' luck turns, it turns in the little things as well as the big, or so it seems.

It comes as little surprise that almost three weeks' worth of documents are missing from the latest load finally surrendered by the Justice Department regarding the fired US attorneys, the Attorney General, and the White House. Such chicanery and evasiveness by the Bush administration have become so nearly routine that it might even have escaped wider public notice.

If only.

If only it had been 17 days' worth of documents missing. Or 19.

But no, just their bad luck that it was 18--a number that invites an easy and obvious historical parallel, the one parallel that Team Bush must surely not want drawn.

Eighteen days worth of documents central to a House investigation of White House wrongdoing mysteriously disappear. The talking point writes itself.

"Has Bush Met His Watergate?" This is the kind of meme-generating headline it's going to take all of the White House topic-changing prowess to drive off the next few news cycles. They could have used that energy for problems closer to home, one imagines.

Like it would have killed the guys in charge of disappearing the evidence to make sure it was any number of days except that number that went missing. The White House that used to arrange photo ops so that Bush's head appeared to be on Mt. Rushmore is losing its famous attention to symbolic detail.