Can you believe it? Barack Hussein Obama II hasn’t even been inaugurated yet and he’s already been interviewed by federal prosecutors in the ongoing Blago mess; he’s seen Bill Richardson immolate himself rather than stand the federal grand-jury scrutiny that would have come with his appointment as Commerce Secretary; his boy Rahm Emanuel is both en pointe, having resigned the House seat that was previously warmed by Hot Rod and Dan Rostenkowski, and, apparently, on Patrick Fitzgerald’s tapes too; and he’s facing the prospect of the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, standing like a homunculus George Wallace in the schoolhouse door, ready to deny entrance to a black man when Roland “We Are the Senator” Burris tries to take Bambi’s hardly-even-used seat tomorrow.

And here we Democrats thought the Clinton administration could never be topped!
You people had better get used to it, though, because hijinks and shenanigans like these are going to be the order of the day for at least the next four years. After all, we are the Tammany Party — the party of Slavery, Segregation, Sedition, and Surrender — so this sort of thing is not exactly new for us. Just look at our track record: We rightfully opposed the tyrant Lincoln with a loser general running on an antiwar platform, we perfected defensive election theft with Boss Tweed to save us from the plutocrats and goo-goos, and we formed an unholy alliance with gangland to get Franklin D. Roosevelt the Democratic nod over Al Smith at our convention in (where else?) Chicago in 1932.

We are the party of Barack Obama and the Daley Machine; the party of the Clintons and their amazing alchemistic Library, which turns Saudi dross into altruistic gold; the party of Tony Rezko and Norman Hsu; the party of vaporizing fundraisers, absconding bagmen and sitting New Mexico governors (and a recent presidential “candidate”) currently under federal investigation for allegedly steering a state contract in the direction of one of his big backers, David Rubin of CDR Financial Products in Beverly Hills. Now comes word that Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state-designate, Congress and the Emoluments Clause willing, got millions of dollars for a mall in Syracuse shortly after the developer coughed up a hundred grand for the Bill Clinton “Foundation.” That’s what I call commerce!

We are also the party of Charlie Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who’s currently under “investigation” by the House “Ethics” Committee for a myriad of dubious practices, including using campaign contributions to pay his parking tickets.

Best of all, we are the party of the ineffable Christopher Dodd (D., Countrywide), another recent “presidential candidate” who in appearance and demeanor is a throwback to the great days of Tammany mugs. It was Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who got a sweetheart mortgage deal as a “Friend of Angelo” Mozilo, the disgraced former head of Countrywide Financial; Dodd who steadfastly denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in trouble — perhaps his status as the No. 1 recipient of their campaign largesse had something to do with his unshakeable faith in them; and Dodd who has promised to release the paperwork concerning his hinky mortgages but, of course, hasn’t.

The War Hero will release his Navy service records, which show him racking up medals faster than Audie Murphy in his 16 weeks of “combat,” before the son of disgraced Connecticut senator Thomas J. Dodd releases his paperwork. Yes, that’s right — Chris’s old man was censured by the Senate in 1967 for behavior “contrary to good morals, [that] derogates from the public trust expected of a senator, and tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.” And now Chris seems headed down the path to the same fate, although how it’s possible to bring a Senate that includes such stalwart Democrats as John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, Robert Byrd, Barbara Boxer, Jay Rockefeller, Carl Levin, Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray, and Hillary Clinton into disrepute seems hard to fathom.

Still, as the Connecticut Post recently editorialized: “[Dodd] says there was nothing untoward about the mortgage rate he received from Countrywide Financial, a company that was heavily involved in the nationwide mortgage collapse. He feigns indignance each time the issue is raised. But he can make the questions stop easily. All he has to do is release documents on two mortgages from Countrywide, each of which seemingly came in with interest figures below the going rate. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, he should have long ago put this issue to rest.”

But what’s the rush? Like one of the patron saints of Tammany Hall, Richard “Boss” Croker, Dodd’s little tin box has bought him a fine getaway estate in the Ould Sod. Dodd’s little manse in County Galway ought to come in handy when the Senate “Ethics” Committee starts closing in.

All of which, believe it or not, makes me proud to be a Democrat. The fact that we can get away with antics like these — the fact that our clown car is being driven at breakneck speed by real clowns under more or less permanent investigation — makes me laugh. Because you dopes never catch on and, like ^%$&BUSH&^%!, insist on treating us as a legitimate political party of high-minded statesmen instead of the lovable scamps and rapscallions we really are.

It doesn’t matter that Tammany and its mini-Tammanys across the country perfected a system of graft and corruption under the guise of helping the “little guy.” It doesn’t matter that, at various times, a coalition of gangsters, criminals, and Democratic politicians has seized, held, and operated whole states as criminal enterprises:

Louisiana, where from Jean Lafitte to Huey Long to Edwin Edwards, crime has paid handsomely in this formerly one-party state. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

New Jersey, where the cozy relationship between the Mob and Trenton is well documented, and where former senator Bob Torricelli — the Torch — loudly proclaimed his innocence in a fundraising scandal right up to the moment he flamed out and quit his reelection race.

Arkansas, whose governors and U.S. senators were for many years on the gangland payroll run out of Hot Springs by transplanted Tammany gangster Owney Madden, acting in concert with Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky.

Illinois, where, in a fit of affirmative action, we’ve brought both Republicans and the Jake Lingle Memorial Media into the fold, so that they can go to jail just like Democrats on the rare occasions they’re caught and convicted.

None of it matters. We keep on peddling the same shtick and the suckers keep on buying, and the bigger Big Government gets, the more adherents we garner. Pretty soon, if it hasn’t happened already, the Party of Take will be bigger than the Party of Give and then the Party really will be over. I just hope I’m long retired to my Countrywide-financed estate in Bayonne before it happens.

Which is why this Fitzgerald character has me a little worried. We loved him when we thought he was going to take down Darth Cheney, and even though all he threw us was the scalp of Marc Rich’s lawyer, Scooter Libby, we took our Fitzmas where we could find it. But now that he’s knee-deep in Blagojevich, we’re beginning to change our tune, and the deeper he digs, the more he’s starting to resemble Thomas Dewey. There are even rumblings that, having requested a three-month extension to bring an indictment against Hot Rod, Paddy Fitz might be looking at a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) beef against the whole darn Combine. Mother of Mercy!

But not to worry: BO Jr., can always do what his Democrat predecessor, Bill Clinton, did and fire every single one of the federal prosecutors, P. J. Fitzgerald, Esq., most certainly included. Luckily, folks will still be too busy sleeping off their hangovers and beginning the gestation period of their new babies to notice.