A bad week for Berlusconi

It's been an awful week for Prime Minister Berlusconi. The Italian version of the Supreme Court rejected a law that immunized the top leaders of the Italian government from prosecution, which means that several prosecutions into Berlusconi's past will resume. In his subsequent remarks to reporters, Berlusconi was genuinely angry:

We will move forward. We have governed five years without [the immunity]. I didn't have faith because with a constitutional court with eleven left-wing judges, it was impossible that they would approve this. In the end, I'd like to say that the synthesis is this: thank goodness that Silvio is here. Because if Silvio wasn't here with his government and with the support of 70% of Italians, Italy would be in the hands of a left wing that would make of our country something which you all know. And so, it's fine that way. We have, number one, a well-organized minority of red magistrates who use the legal system towards political ends; we have 72% of the press that consists of left-wing journalists; we have all the news shows on public television, paid with everyone's money, dominated by the left wing; they make fun of us even with comic shows; you all know whose side the head of state is on; we have eleven judges on the constitutional court chosen by the heads of the left wing who make of the constitutional court not an organ to guarantee justice, but a political organ. We will move forward. The investigations that they will hurl against me in Milan are of a nature that is authentically false; I will lose an hour from public service to go there and put the lie to all of them. These things here they make my responsibility; they make them the Italians' burden; hurray for Italy; hurray for Berlusconi.

Wow. An entire minute without any jokes, without any funny decsriptions of his political opponents? Has anyone ever seen Berlusconi lose his composure that way?

Yet the news gets worse! Just today we learn that the campaign to win Berlusconi a Nobel Peace Prize for, among other accomplishments, his work settling the war between Russia and Georiga was considered less admirable than the accomplishments of the president of the United States, which include…

uhm…

…someone help me out here…



Update: I don't know what's funnier, some of the mockery being directed at the Nobel committee, or the way die-hard Obama worshipers are characterizing Richard Cohen as a "neocon" and a "rightie".

My favorite joke so far comes from a comment to Cohen's piece:

Maybe this is why Chicago didn't get the Olympics -- the IOC didn't want the spectacle of seeing gold medals handed out before the events are even started.