Log onto Ambien.com and you’re met with the promise that “Tomorrow will thank you.”  According to a rash of lawsuits, however, tomorrow hasn’t been exactly thrilled with last night.  A growing number of patients are reporting disturbing patterns of behavior while under the influence of the controversial sleeping pill.  Several wrecked their cars while sleep-driving, while others absent-mindedly shopped on line.  One man in India even divorced his wife while snoozing.  The most common affliction, it seems, involves gluttony.  Patients are waking up ankle-deep in the alluvium of Popsicle sticks, candy wrappers, cookie boxes, ravaged jars of peanut butter and half-eaten loaves of bread.  One woman gained as much as 100 pounds.  “These people are hell-bent to eat,” observed Dr. Mark Mahowald, director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center.  And the Mayo Clinic concurs: “In our clinical experience, zolpidem [generic Ambien] is associated with this.”  More details will no doubt emerge as various class-action cases snake through the courts, but the overriding issue facing our litigious society is whether we can be held responsible for our sleep-induced conduct?  If not, this modern day Twinkie defense could prove a handy strategy for all those Bush administration criminals.  It sounds a lot better, for example, than lame excuse proffered by Homeland Security’s Brian Doyle and Frank Figueroa: “between the padded bra and lip gloss, I thought she was at least 19.”

Could drug maker Sanofi-Aventis be on the hook for dozens of fraudulent refunds that White House domestic policy advisor Claude Allen wrangled form Target and Hecht’s? What about Duke Cunningham and all those lobbyists; did they plead guilty too soon? One apparatchik who won’t need to blame it on the meds is Scooter Libby. According to sworn testimony leaked from the recently translated Gospel of Judas, Scooter was ordered to commit treason by Vice President Cheney who was in turn authorized by the President himself. Mr. Bush, of course, claims he was directed to jeopardize the lives of CIA agents assigned to stifle Mid East nuclear proliferation by none other than Baby Jesus. Around the beltway, the debate rages as to whether the present administration is systemically inept or deliberately abetting Iran’s weapons program in order to pave the way towards the apocalypse. With the query unresolved, W’s handpicked commission charged with obfuscating the failure to find any WMDs in Iraq issued the following communiqué: “Policymakers who leak intelligence to the press in order to gain political advantage… may do so without fully appreciating the potential harm that can result to sources and methods.” Oblivious to such high-minded commentary, the President blithely defended his actions during a recent press conference, though he became visibly unglued when asked about the Darwin-supporting discovery of 375 million-year-old missing link Tiktaalik. Staring squarely at the genetic bridge connecting fish to amphibians, Mr. Bush shifted his weight, blinked nervously, shrugged his shoulders, and offered with a smirk, “Christ has no comment at this time.”

With $2.2 billion in annual sales, Ambien is an obvious target for plaintiffs’ attorneys. Too bad the drug wasn’t around in the 1980s. First, I could have alleviated my Reagan era night sweats and second, Lt. Col. Juan Evangelista López Grijalba might have been able to fob off the $47 million judgment rendered by a Miami federal judge. The former leader of Honduras’s infamous Battalion 3-16 death squad was ordered to compensate his victims of kidnapping, torture and murder since, in the court’s words, “He was obviously awake at the time.” There has been no verdict, however, regarding U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who between 1981 and 1985 served as ambassador to Honduras and multiplied twenty-fold the amount of military aid used to support these human rights violations. Some go as far as to assert that the ambassador condoned the torture and murder of two dozen Salvadoran nuns and that he was complicit in the Iran Contra scandal. Because Negroponte was never caught, he, unlike the newly dead Caspar Weinberger, will have to get his executive pardon from this President Bush.

Such a magic wand, apparently, is the only way Jose Padilla will ever see the light of day. Originally jailed for planning to explode a “dirty bomb,” Padilla remains in custody long after the ersatz charges have been abandoned. The Supreme Court declined to hear his case, much to the chagrin of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “Does the president have the authority,” she wrote, “to imprison indefinitely a United States citizen arrested on United States soil distant from a zone of combat, based on an executive declaration the citizen was, at the time of his arrest, an ‘enemy combatant’? It is a question the court heard and should have decided two years ago.” So the dye is plainly cast; the Republicans are now in unassailable control of all three branches of the federal government. Does it follow, then, that the plurality is without any means to assert itself?

The electoral high jinks pulled in Ohio (and four years earlier in Florida) means we are all strippers entering a Duke University lacrosse party when we step into a voting booth. There is nothing for it, then, despite Tiananmen’s iconic failure, but to take to the streets. Weeks of protesting by French students successfully pressured President Jacques Chirac into scrapping the wildly unpopular Contrat Première Embauche. The proposed labor law would have made it easier for 18 to 26-year-olds (one in four of whom are unemployed) to get private sector jobs, which, naturally, is why they were protesting. But the larger point is that the lazy bastards actually got something done. Meanwhile, here in America, millions of illegal aliens have been demonstrating against a Republican plan to import the Great Wall of China and to brand each undocumented immigrant (and anyone who “assists” them) a felon. Noticeably, the tidal wave of humanity is beginning to alter the landscape: Public opinion, while divided, is beginning to soften at the same time Congress is contorting itself into a much less egregious position. This gathering sea change has embarrassed Republicans in the House to the point where they are disavowing their weeks-old hard-line tactics. The RNC is running ads on Latino radio saying, “Democrat [Senate] Leader Harry Reid let us down. [His] allies voted to treat millions of hard-working immigrants … as felons.”

These days it is more likely that the felon in your neighborhood is a member of the House of Representatives rather than a dishwasher over at Applebee’s. That is precisely why we shouldn’t blame the Capitol Police for their program of racial profiling or for accosting Congresswoman of color Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) as she tried to enter the legislative chamber. With Duke Cunningham (R-CA) already behind bars and Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Bob Ney (R-OH) being fitted for orange jumpsuits, it might just be better to deport the politicians and let the field workers write the laws.

As for DeLay, his departure from public life was executed with the same distain for decency that he forged as House Whip and later honed as Majority Leader. He waited until after winning the primary election in the 22nd District to announce his retirement because any reelection contributions can be used for legal bills stemming from “official” misconduct (as opposed to, say, robbing a liquor store). DeLay was only happy, therefore, to extend his fundraising capabilities without the burden of a dollar-sapping, tightly contested general election. Equally Machiavellian is his relocation to Virginia. This allows for the Republican Governor to place a challenger on the November ballot while painting his primary opponents as losers. According to NRCC spokesman Carl Forti, while Tom considered the three antagonists to be “unworthy back stabbers and ass lickers,” he felt it imperative that the GOP keep the reins in Washington. With two of his former aides pleading guilty in the expanding Abramoff conspiracy, DeLay, like Padilla, may be hoping to garner his own presidential pardon. That is why in his farewell speech, DeLay bellowed, “I know firsthand how important it is for Republicans to maintain their national majority. A Democratic Congress in 2007 would without doubt or remorse… immediately initiate an unconstitutional impeachment of President Bush.” Now that’s something I won’t lose sleep over.