Dining with dictators:

This has been a bust week for W., what with all the dictators in town and all. First there was Pervez Musharraf -- who came to power in a bloodless coup -- and now Nursultan Nazarbayev is in town. Luckily, he desposed of that little Altynbek Sarsenbayev problem before he got to town. Sarenbayev's "killers" were convincted in one of those show-trials dictators are so fond of earlier on this month. Now, it's on to fancy parties, meetings with oil tycoons and getting his picture taken with W. for the folks back home.

So what if Nazarbayev is a despot, he's not as bad as some of the other dictators in Central Asia; he's no Turkmanbashi or Islam Karimov. (Wait, Rummy still likes him.) And, by the way, W. just became a dictator himself. In case you were on Mars this week, W. got the go ahead from Congress last night to do pretty much anything he wants: torture, stage show trials, keep his black prisons open, round up new types of suspects with broader definition's of who's been naughty and nice etc. All in all a pretty good week for the boy king. If he's really lucky Arlen Spector's domestic spying bill will be voted on today and it'll be a clean sweep.

When in Rome. . .