The owner of a Chinese toy factory committed suicide last weekend over the shame of his company's being behind the recall of about a million Mattel toys. If only that time honored tradition of taking responsibility for one's egregious sins by proverbially plunging one's self onto a spear made the trip from Shanghai to Washington, D.C. then the stomach churning spectacle of Karl Rove and George Bush getting all choked up at the former's imminent departure from the Neo-Coven wouldn't be so icky if he actually sought corporeal closure to his dishonorable tenure.

Given Rove's catalog of misdeeds against the republic, seeking a noble exit after years spent raking democracy over the coals would not merely amount to spending more time with his family -- unless that included some face time with his ancestors. How his image would improve after going into a room, switching on The Doodletown Pipers (or whatever is on his Republican Party-issue iPod), disrobing in front of an official portrait of Ronald Reagan, and making the ultimate sacrifice for his corporation. I mean country. A diminutive chicken-hawk no more, he would transmute into the apotheosis of The Decider's Self-Sacrificer; from Turd Blossom to ascendant lotus, his act a true acknowledgment of deep remorse.

Since there seems to be little stomach in the standard earthbound pursuit of executive branch justice, let his own (up till now absent) morality and the judgment of the Intelligent Designer render a verdict. When Lee Atwater found his conscience it was forced upon him in his final hours, his biased, myopic vision finally cleared by the insinuation of the mortality that binds every living thing and which the Powerful eerily forget as they rampage over the corpses of the meek in their quest to make a profit. By exercising his legendary foresight, perhaps Rove would spare the few untrampled remnants of our American democracy and find sooner than later the true patriot within, unselfishly and generously giving his life for his country. Proverbially speaking, of course.