Dirty bomber? Dirty justice.

One of the biggest of the Bush Big Cons has been the Jose Padilla "dirty bomber" case. Nearly every claim the government originally made about him has been proven an outright lie, as Lewis Koch demonstrated to a fare-thee-well in this classic article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Now that Padilla's finally going on trial - an eventuality the government worked very, very hard to render impossible - the restrictions on reporters are unprecedented. Washington claims security concerns. Almost certainly, what they're really afraid of is embarrassment. If Geoge Orwell and Franz Kafka had a love child, it would look like the Padilla case. God forbid it should be exposed to the light of day.

Which is why we should all be grateful that Lew Koch himself, an old-fashioned ass-kicking Chicago investigative reporter, trained by the same guys who trained Seymour Hersh, will be covering the trial for Fire Dog Lake. We'll be checking back often. You should too. The Bush Justice Department will not survive this trial - if it gets the attention it deserves.