Safavian goes down! Speculation says his conviction may set off a dominolike chain of Republicrook indictments. Uh-oh, watch out, Boo-Hoo Bob Ney!

So, Bush-administration scumbag David Safavian (seen at right), the first accused Republicrook to go to trial on Jack Abramoff-related corruption charges, has been found guilty on four of five counts.

This is more than just a case of one down, all those others to go. Because there is reason to believe that federal prosecutors have been waiting on a conviction in the Safavian case as a springboard to what could be a dominolike chain of indictments—involving the familiar roster of Republicrooks we've been waiting to wave off to prison, to kick off the official celebration of the Republican Culture of Corruption.

Newsweek chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff has been peddling this line for a while now in his weekly spots on Rachel Maddow's Air America Radio show, and today, with the jury seemingly slow to return a verdict, he returned to the theme. If the Safavian trial goes on too long, he suggested, the timetable could take us into the election season, when prosecutors are traditionally reluctant to seek indictments, meaning postponement till after the election.

This is, presumably, out of fairness. Talk about gallows humor. It would be singularly appropriate for people who devote their every waking breath to trashing any reasonable concept of fairness to profit from it—in the case of the prison-bound Republicrooks, to buy some time till they're indicted, and in the case of the Republican Party as a whole, to avoid having to answer to the electorate for its perversion of government into a syndicate of overlapping criminal fiefdoms.

Well, the Safavian jury doesn't seem to have been overly confused by the dust that the defense attempted to throw in its eyes. And if Isikoff is right, this could be bad news for all those slimeball Republicrooks who for months now have been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Everyone seems to agree that at the top of the list is Ohio's own Boo-Hoo I Didn't Do Nothin' Bob Ney. With all the Ney lackeys and co-conspirators the feds are supposed to have flipped, you have to wonder whether it's just a matter of time before Boo-Hoo Bob's angry protestations of innocence turn into Duke Cunningham-style bawling.