Jack Abramoff is a flaming rat

There is a famous legal case law students study about a rat that catches on fire after running into a space heater causing a house to burn down. The legal question was whether the flaming rat and subsequent house incineration was "foreseeable" and thus whether the space heater company could be liable for turning home sweet home into a charcoal briquette. I think the answer was "no" but I'm not sure. There is a joke about lawyers handling a rat case, (you know something like did the rat get the family discount?) in here somewhere but I'm too tired to figure it out.)

A story from New Mexico brings back memories. A mouse got its revenge against a homeowner who tried to dispose of it in a pile of burning leaves. The blazing creature ran back to the man’s house and set it on fire. It's always a good Monday when you wake up to a "flaming rodent" story. Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner said he caught the mouse inside his house and wanted to get rid of it. “I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house,” Mares said from a motel room Saturday. No was hurt inside, but the home and everything in it was destroyed. Maybe Mares will be on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition soon.

Think of Jack Abramoff or Rep. Duke Cunningham or Michael Scanlon or David Safavian or Rep. Bob Ney or Rep. John T. Doolittle or Rep. Richard Pombo or, or, or...well the list of "flaming" Republicans goes on and on. They claimed to have come to Washington to do "good" but they ended up doing "well." They are now "flaming rodents" and they will likely burn down the Republican political house. We can only hope. The British set the White House on fire in 1814. The Republicans prefer to burn their own house down all by themselves.

I love the smell of charred hubris in the morning, it smells like...burnt Republican rat fur.