Robert Kennedy Jr.'s much-anticipated Rolling Stone survey of dirty tricks in the 2004 election is finally online (currently loading slowly -- no doubt it's seeing plenty of traffic). At a glance, nothing really new here, much of it already covered in the Conyers report (.pdf). But with such an estimable organ of blandness as Newsweek likewise taking on ballot security, there's some chatter that the imprimatur of a credentialed American aristocrat might actually force it into the mainstream. (Just in time for Bush knocking along at 30% ... how convenient!)

No way, I say. It's too big, and the implicated faction is still too tough to tangle with. Even now it's too fire-breathing crazy to say in polite company that the justifications for Iraq were flat-out spun out of air, even though that was obvious four years ago. Don't hold your breath on the "systematic corruption of liberal democracy" story.