The days of sweltering repose that are August are drawing to a close;
silly season in Washington reconvenes a week from Tuesday, and not just
the annual rite of misbegotten optimism for the football team with the
racist moniker.

In addition to September's bookend marquees -- the John Roberts kabuki dance (opening September 6) and a massive anti-war rally (September 24-26) -- the nation's parliamentarians have lodged a predictably nefarious docket heavy on fiscal austerity that's a calculated purpose of the Bush tax cuts. (oh, there's another one of those in the pipe, too.)

While President Bush's poll numbers continue their spelunk into hitherto unexplored subterranean crevasses, the fact has scarcely reined in the aggression of his government. As Alex Cockburn and Jeff St. Clair observed recently, "Stricken
he may be in the popular polls, but his political agenda
flourishes." Other than Social Security -- a necessary but
scarcely sufficient rearguard success -- the President gets what the
President wants, aided where necessary by Democrats.

The outlook for the fall suggests more of the same:
the Roberts papers await only their rubber stamp; rising gas prices
look to oil the skids for the Alaskan plunder.

Back to work, then. We're about to be busy.