First I'll quote Digby quoting Juan Cole

"Democracy depends not just on elections but on a rule of law, on stable institutions, on basic economic security for the population, and on checks and balances that forestall a tyranny of the majority. Elections in the absence of this key societal context can produce authoritarian regimes and abuses as easily as they can produce genuine people power. Bush is on the whole unwilling to invest sufficiently in these key institutions and practices abroad."

Then I'll just mention that it seems rather unwilling to invest in these things at home either.


the Digby Link

The Juan Cole Link

My point exactly!

From the Boston Globe

On a legal level, however, Bush's initiative has deeper implications, analysts said. If the public and the Congress accept Bush's assertion of power, they would clear the way for an increase in presidential power that could last long after Bush leaves office, the analysts said.

''This power will lie around like a loaded weapon for any future incumbent to use when he wants to override a law," said Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. ''There will be terrorism forever, so it will become a permanent fixture on our legal landscape.


link here

Shamelessly exerpting again

This time from Digby

Notice how Limbaugh and the preachers pander to the depraved imagination? It's not religious values these people are selling. They are selling a brutal, domineering, degenerate culture, making their listeners and viewers wallow in it, plumbing the depths of the subconscious, drawing forth Goyaesque images of bestiality and violence and death. That's a feature of some religions, to be sure, but it's not the nice upright Christian morality everybody's pretending it is.

Yet another reminder that 50% of people have below average intelligence.

Do you think an independent counsel should be appointed to investigate whether the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program violated the law?


Yes 48% => 7797 votes

No 50% => 8176 votes

I'm not sure 1% => 224 votes
Current number of voters: 16197

Quoting ReddHedd who quoted Steve Clemons

Now is the time for true patriots to dig deep and raise their voices against the tyranny of King George. The question is, how many true patriots do we have in Congress and on the judicial bench? This is not a political issue, it is an American issue that crosses political party boundaries. If liberty will not be defended by the people of this nation, then liberty ceases to exist.

Either you are for liberty -- or you are for a King. You choose.

ReddHedd citing Steve Clemons

I can't believe someone actually wrote this sentence without their head exploding.

Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans' personal freedoms. Now we'll see if the president rises to the occasion.



link here

Re: John Caroll's colums as link to by David Gans

I - like Jon Carroll have always assumed that this kind of eavesdropping was going on and that data mining technology was being used domestically. That isn't what bothers me. What bothers me is that in the context of the revelation that this has been going on, the president has abruptly declared that he is no longer bound by acts of Congress signed into law. He made the same declaration when he signed the bill that contains the McCain amendement. Not even back when the Chicago Police were beating the heads of photographers outside the Democratic National Convention, did I ever imagine that our nation would descend to the point where the phrases "legalizing torture" and "extraordinary rendition" and "indefinite detention" would enter our ordinary discourse. But here we are!

The original column

David Gans' Post

The most reasonable analysis of the NSA situation that I've encountered to date.

A more nuanced explanation may lie in the physics of the challenges faced by the NSA and the availability of sophisticated technologies not foreseen when the FISA law was passed in 1978.

link here

Every single American citizen needs to read this post.

This represents the most blatant executive power grab since Lincoln suspended habeus corpus and no one seems to be noticing.

Glenn Greenwald cross posting at Digby

We don't need no stinking badges!

''Of course the president has the obligation to follow this law, [but] he also has the obligation to defend and protect the country as the commander in chief, and he will have to square those two responsibilities in each case," the official added. ''We are not expecting that those two responsibilities will come into conflict, but it's possible that they will."

Per the Boston Globe

Today's quote is from Glenn Greenwald

Even Americans who agree on nothing else know, even if only on the most submerged and basest levels, that what distinguishes America from other countries and what keeps us safe and secure in our liberty is that nobody, including the President, is above the law. Read the full post