Apart from taxes & tyranny, warm beer and the Beatles, Robin Hood and Royal Weddings, what has England ever given us? For starters, the rule of law.

We talk about it here a lot, about how it no longer seems to apply to government and corporate elites. Like a hole in the sidewalk on a snowy day, that creates a slush-filled pool. We can step in it day after Groundhog Day. Or we can learn more about what “the rule of law” means and repair the crack.

There was something I appreciated about the Holder press conference capitulating on trying the 9/11 defendants in civilian trials.

He didn’t try to spin it as a good idea.

Because nothing says “laying the foundation” of a Presidential campaign and “inspiring new” supporters like caving to fearmongering.

Laws and rules are for the little people. Especially the ones without guns.

Pretty crazy, isn’t it, imagining what it would be like to live in a country with a functioning rule of law … like Colombia?

I don’t care if they find Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map in Jared Loughner’s bedroom. She didn’t cause him to do what he did. What she did do, undeniably and indisputably, was act irresponsibly in the midst of an extremely volatile situation. On the fifth straight day of violence and threats against members of Congress over the health care bill, when everyone from John Boehner on down was calling for the attacks to stop, Palin released her “crosshairs” map and tried to prove she was not a “weenie” by telling people to “reload, not retreat.”

The fall and decline of an empire can take many years, but certain “benchmarks” (as imperial courts have been known to call them) can measure the progress in one year alone. Take, for example, the year 2010.

Homeowners want to save their homes. Loan servicers want to maximize profits. Investors want to put back the soured mortgage-backed securities on the banks. The banks want to fight that. Title insurers don’t want to take losses on properties with blighted titles. Fannie and Freddie are acting like investors on one side and like partners with the banks on the other. There are all sorts of competing incentives.

Thanks to those very same conservatives, this entire country now resembles nothing so much as their stereotype of a loser writ large.

Welcome to the lonely battle of fighting for the rule of law, right winger Andrew Napolitano. But the time for the right wing to make these arguments was probably 2004, not 2010.