When empires go down, daily life generally wobbles at an escalating speed between the bizarre and the prosaic, as though the vibrations are increasing relentlessly into an area where only dogs can hear them. When Rome went, Caligula was appointing his horse as Consul, while merchants competed for the desperate consumer dollar. I’d bet Germany looked like it, and the old Soviets before what was left of the original dream, which was not much, got pissed away in Afghanistan.

Karl Rove “brings down the house in D.C.,” according to the stupefying caption in the Chronicle. Two photos, , one in which the unindicted – as yet – co-conspirator whose felonies exposed a CIA agent and her network, a critical operation in Saudi Arabia designed to thwart the spread of advanced weaponry, one photo in which he is waving his arms in the air, “dancing,” according to the Chron, with “comedian” Colin Mochrie, and another depicting the little Nazi swine faking a white-boy “rap.”

The occasion for Rove’s latest song and dance numbers was the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner at the Washington Hilton. You may recall that last year’s fun was ruined when Stephen Colbert, not ten feet away from King George, utterly destroyed his policies, his administration, and him personally with a commentary so straight and true it was a wonder the President did not turn himself over to prosecutors on the spot. Colbert, for good measure, also mentioned the great integrity and independence of the mass media in its notable cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq and its unreflective acceptance of even the craziest lies from the government.

No one was going to let that happen, ever, ever again. Thus: Colin Mochrie, whoever the fuck he is. We know this about him: he likes to dance with Karl Rove.

And on a related note:

A man in North Carolina was charged last week with animal cruelty after it was discovered that he harbored 77 sheep in his home. The cops were initially tipped off when some of the sheep were found grazing on artificial flowers at the cemetary in Apex, a Raleigh suburb. The suspect, David Watts, said that the animals were “relaxing to be around.”