From this CNN piece:

• “So, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, I authorized the interception of international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations.” Translation: “I’m wholly ignorant and contemptuous of the Constitution and US law, and FISA be damned.”
• “I’ve reauthorized this program more 30 times since the September 11 attacks and I intend to do so for so long as the nation faces a continuing threat from an enemy that wants to kill American citizens”. Translation: “Expect the NSA to be eavesdropping on American citizens forever.”
• “My personal opinion is, it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war . . . The fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy.” Translation: “I’m very upset that the press is finally doing its job with respect to examining and investigating the actions of the government, and, in so doing, acting as a check on the power thereof. Also, it’s utterly impossible that terrorist operatives might have assumed we were listening in anyway.”

Via Atrios, we find these paragraphs from Digby:

Look, the problem here, again, is not one of just spying on Americans, as repulsively totalitarian as that is. It’s that the administration adopted John Yoo’s theory of presidential infallibility. But, of course, it wasn’t really John Yoo’s theory at all; it was Dick Cheney’s muse, Richard Nixon who said, “when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.” This was not some off the cuff statement. It was based upon a serious constitutional theory — that the congress or the judiciary (and by inference the laws they promulgate and interpret) have no authority over an equal branch of government. The president, in the pursuit of his duties as president, is not subject to the laws. Citizens can offer their judgment of his performance every four years at the ballot box.

The problem with this “theory” is that in our republic, no one is above the law. Not even Bush.

Update: Links fixed. Oops.

Tell me again how enhanced surveillance powers don’t automatically lead to bullshit like this. Precis: college senior requests the “Little Red Book” via interlibrary loan for a paper on communism and is visited by Feds as a result. Watch what you read, kid.

THIS is what Bush wants for America. You can put a crisis face on it by chanting “9/11! 9/11! 9/11!” over and over, but that just makes it more Orwellian. Next week? Two Minutes Hate!

Those Hollywood jackasses are at it again, and Congress is behaving like a wholly owned subsidary of the MPAA. The House Judiciary Committee has introduced legislation that would effectively kill the “analog hole,” fair use be damned. In other words, they want any piece of electronics that can play or copy something being played to pay attention to some special watermarking scheme that keeps copies from being made. Want to dub that CD to tape? Not anymore.

Techdirt has a great roundup of links on this.

Via Atrios again, this fine bit from the Washington Monthly site, concerning the extralegal domestic surveilance Bush ordered the military and NSA to do:

This is against the law. I have put references to the relevant statute below the fold; the brief version is: the law forbids warrantless surveillance of US citizens, and it provides procedures to be followed in emergencies that do not leave enough time for federal agents to get a warrant. If the NY Times report is correct, the government did not follow these procedures. It therefore acted illegally. Bush’s order is arguably unconstitutional as well: it seems to violate the fourth amendment, and it certainly violates the requirement (Article II, sec. 3) that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” I am normally extremely wary of talking about impeachment. I think that impeachment is a trauma for the country, and that it should only be considered in extreme cases. Moreover, I think that the fact that Clinton was impeached raises the bar as far as impeaching Bush: two traumas in a row is really not good for the country, and even though my reluctance to go through a second impeachment benefits the very Republicans who needlessly inflicted the first on us, I don’t care. It’s bad for the country, and that matters most. But I have a high bar, not a nonexistent one. And for a President to order violations of the law meets my criteria for impeachment. This is exactly what got Nixon in trouble: he ordered his subordinates to obstruct justice. To the extent that the two cases differ, the differences make what Bush did worse: after all, it’s not as though warrants are hard to get, or the law makes no provision for emergencies. Bush could have followed the law had he wanted to. He chose to set it aside. And this is something that no American should tolerate. We claim to have a government of laws, not of men. That claim means nothing if we are not prepared to act when a President (or anyone else) places himself above the law. If the New York Times report is true, then Bush should be impeached.

Update: Rep. Miller (D-CA) agrees.

John Spencer, best known as President Bartlett’s Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, died suddenly this morning of a heart attack.

His filibuster on PATRIOT has survived a cloture vote; Pandagon says it was 52-47.

Robert Novak, douchebag for liberty, is leaving CNN. (He’s going to Fox.)

The Pentagon is spying on US citizens, like, say, Quakers.

Add this to the provisions of the PATRIOT act that essentially criminalize protest under certain conditions, and we Heathen begin to wonder just exactly what the hell happened to our country.

Our cousin made an Onion story this week.

I mean, he’s a Republican tool, but at least we can laugh at him, right?

Or, at least, it will be if points of view like this one are widely held. First Draft provides a much-needed rebuttal. (Via Atrios.)

From Bruce Schneier, quoting Salon’s pilot columnist:

In the days ahead, you can expect sharp debate on whether the killing was justified, and whether the nation’s several thousand air marshals — their exact number is a tightly guarded secret — undergo sufficient training. How are they taught to deal with mentally ill individuals who might be unpredictable and unstable, but not necessarily dangerous? Are the rules of engagement overly aggressive? Those are fair questions, but not the most important ones. Wednesday’s incident fulfills what many of us predicted ever since the Federal Air Marshals Service was widely expanded following the 2001 terror attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington: The first person killed by a sky marshal, whether through accident or misunderstanding, would not be a terrorist. In a lot of ways, Alpizar is the latest casualty of Sept. 11. He is not the victim of a trigger-happy federal marshal but of our own, now fully metastasized security mania.

Diebold CEO resigns after reports of fraud litigation, internal woes (RawStory). Developing, as they say.

Say you’re asleep in your house with your kid in the middle of the night, and some people bust in with paramilitary gear, and you — law-abiding, gun-owning citizen that you are — open fire on the intruders in an effort to protect yourself, your daughter, and your home. Say you kill one of the intruders. Why, where I live, they’d probably give you a slap on the back and buy you a beer.

You certainly wouldn’t expect to end up on death row, would you? Certainly not in Texas. Certainly not in the Mississippi I grew up in, either. Except, of course, if you’re black, and the intruders are dimwitted redneck cops storming the wrong home in search of a drug den, and the guy you killed is the white son of the chief of police. Then all bets are off, and you may well find yourself in a world of hurt. For example, you might be on death row.

Christ.

There are some things so irredeemably fucked that they transcend party politics, and this is one of them. It’s monstrous.

More on the case here; that blogger follows it pretty closely, so his top page is always a good place to go.