So, after Mike Brown was ditched as head of FEMA, they brought him back as a consultant, ostensibly to diagnose what went wrong in New Orleans. And it was in that capacity that, earlier this week, he was up before Congress telling them that Louisiana's Governor Blanco had failed to declare a state of emergency in a timely manner.

Well, if you're reading liberal blogs, you already know he was lying. (Under oath, no less --- but since he wasn't lying under oath about a blowjob received by a Democrat, the Republicans who would otherwise be outraged are giving him a mulligan). But the mainstream media, applying their usual criteria, realized that no one in power had told them this was news, and so they didn't report it.

And so, when she testified herself before Congress yesterday, Governor Blanco was effectively on trial before the public for gross negligence, whatever the ostensible purpose of the hearing. And she effectively pleaded no contest, saying that she was there to talk about job creation. For which she was praised by the ranking Democrat in attendance:

"Good for you, Gov. Blanco," [Senator] Baucus said. "This is not about blame, this is about how we get this job done. I appreciate your response."

Well, before, there might have been some confusion on the part of, say, a cub reporter, about whether it was news that Brown was lying. But now that people in power, on the opposition side no less, have assured them that there is no news here, the chance that it might slip into the news anyway, perhaps, as some kind of mistake, has just about vanished. Which means that there's just about no hope for, say, the lies about the availability of buses. (Dubya's FEMA turned away offers of thousands of them from major companies, because they'd given a politically connected contractor a $100 million contract to coordinate that. The contractor, when the time came to deliver, was looking for buses on the Web).

That all doesn't bother the Dims, as the Freepers so aptly refer to them. As Blanco herself noted, even though Brown has slandered her right now, she's happy to wait for "the facts [to] speak for themselves when the time is appropriate." Which would presumably be when the Republican narrative is firmly established in the public mind, and any attempt to question it can be dismissed with a curt "get over it."

That was the Dim theory about how to hold Republicans accountable for their failures in defense about terrorism. Since it worked so well there, why stop now?