Speaking of police accountability, check this out (from the Wiki entry for Jeffrey Dahmer):

In the early morning hours of May 30, 1991, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone (by chance, the younger brother of the boy whom Dahmer had molested) was discovered on the street, wandering naked, heavily under the influence of drugs and bleeding from his rectum. Two young women from the neighborhood found the dazed boy and called 911. Dahmer chased his victim down and tried to take him away, but the women stopped him.[29] Dahmer told police that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend, and that they had an argument while drinking. Against the protests of the two women who had called 911, police turned him over to Dahmer. They later reported smelling a strange scent while inside Dahmer's apartment, but did not investigate it. The smell was the body of Tony Hughes, Dahmer's previous victim, decomposing in the bedroom. The two policemen failed to run a background check that would have revealed that Dahmer was a convicted child molester still under probation.[30] The officers laughed about the incident, one joking that his partner was "going to get deloused."[31] Later that night, Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone, keeping his skull as a souvenir.

John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, two of the three police officers who returned Sinthasomphone to Dahmer, were fired from the Milwaukee Police Department after their actions were widely publicized, including an audiotape of the officers making homophobic statements to their dispatcher and cracking jokes about having reunited the "lovers". The two officers appealed their termination and were reinstated with back pay. They were named officers of the year by the police union for fighting a "righteous" battle to regain their jobs. Balcerzak was later elected president of the Milwaukee Police Association in May 2005.

John Balcerzak is in fact the president of the Milwaukee Police Association, and a movement to recall him failed 312-397. On the bright side, it's reassuring to know that 312 Milwaukee officers have enough of a sense of decency that they don't want as their president a guy who bragged about "reuniting" Dahmer with his victim.*

Just goes to show you, it's hard to discipline people these days.

Not even Bush and Ashcroft could fire the government employees who gave visas to Mohammad Atta and company.

And if President Bush couldn't fire government employees, that means I couldn't do it either, not even if I had real power.

So.... if I couldn't remedy the problems of which I complain, perhaps I shouldn't sit in judgment of those who can't.

Democracy is humbling.

And disillusioning.

*It may not have been his fault. And the issuance of visas to Atta and company might not have been the fault of the people who issued them. And what about the failure of the Army to discharge Major Hasan?

MORE: Just for tonight, may I please at least be allowed to sit in judgment of those who apparently think that complaints about "homophobic statements" have any place in the discussion of the torture murder of a fourteen year old boy?

This trivializes something absolutely horrific.... Whatever "homophobia" the officers may have engaged in pales in comparison to the monstrousness of the underlying crime.

Political correctness does function as a diversion, doesn't it?