Italys flamboyant and well-heeled

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Italy’s flamboyant and well-heeled Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is currently standing trial on charges that he bribed judges in the pursuit of a 1985 deal to privatize the state food and catering company. (Note to conservatives: Privatization is not without its dangers! On the other hand, the state food and catering company? Sheesh!) Berlusconi says he is the victim of persecution by leftist judges. And today he called for his trial to be suspended so that the Italian parliament could reinstate immunity for all high-ranking pols. “We must intervene,” he said today, “but not to help me as Prime Minister to pass the test of our EU presidency … ” (Italy is about to assume the rotating EU presidency.)

How’s that for selflessness!

For all I know, Berlusconi may be right: maybe he is being persecuted by leftist judges. But I’d hate to think that Italian democracy — always a rather delicate plant — had fallen so low as to be subject to a plot in which interested politicians and partial judges tried to use the courts to toss out a popularly-elected national leader!

How could such a state even call itself a democracy?

Oh the humanity …

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