The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

The attorney general should be immune from lawsuits for ordering wiretaps of Americans without permission from a court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, wrote in a memorandum in 1984 as a government lawyer in the Reagan administration.

The memorandum, released yesterday by the National Archives, made recommendations concerning a lawsuit against former Attorney General John N. Mitchell over a wiretap he had authorized without a court's permission in 1970. The government was investigating a plot to destroy underground utility tunnels in Washington and to kidnap Henry A. Kissinger, the national security adviser.

The White House said yesterday that the issues discussed in that memorandum were not the same as those posed by President Bush's orders to the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on international communications without warrants.

"Judge Alito's memo regarding a purely domestic threat is completely different from N.S.A.'s efforts to thwart threats from foreign terrorist organizations," said Steve Schmidt, a White House spokesman.

In a letter to Judge Alito, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said yesterday that he would question him vigorously about his current views on whether the attorney general and other top officials "have absolute immunity from suits based on even willful unconstitutional acts."

In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled that wiretaps without warrants in the context of domestic intelligence surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The court did not address international communications.

"I do not question that the attorney general should have this immunity," Judge Alito wrote in 1984, arguing that top officials should not be subject to liability for damages for decisions relating to national security, including when they knowingly violated the law. But he counseled against appealing the issue to the Supreme Court, for two reasons.

"Absolute immunity arguments are difficult to pursue successfully," he wrote. "Because we now must argue that the official should be immune from violating clearly established legal standards," there is a "high risk of failure."

A second reason for not appealing, he wrote, was a 1978 law, the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, that "clarified the procedure in this area and probably reduced in large measure the potential for future litigation."

That law, which is at the center of the current controversy, created the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, which considers and issues warrants for gathering intelligence in the United States. The administration did not seek permission from that or any other court for the recently disclosed monitoring.

In his 1984 memorandum, Judge Alito urged his superiors to await a different legal vehicle, presumably one not tied to the abuses of the Nixon administration, to make the argument that top officials were free to violate the law.

"Our chances of persuading the court to accept an absolute immunity argument would probably be improved in a case involving a less controversial official and a less controversial era," he wrote.

Large demonstrations broke out across the country Friday to denounce parliamentary elections that protesters say were rigged in favor of the main religious Shiite coalition.

Several hundred thousand people demonstrated after noon prayers in southern Baghdad Friday, many carrying banners decrying last week's elections. Many Iraqis outside the religious Shiite coalition allege that the elections were unfair to smaller Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups.

"We refuse the cheating and forgery in the elections," one banner read.

During Friday prayers at Baghdad's Umm al-Qura mosque, the headquarters of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a major Sunni clerical group, Sheik Mahmoud al-Sumaidaei told followers they were "living a conspiracy built on lies and forgery."

"You have to be ready during these hard times and combat forgeries and lies for the sake of Islam," he said.

Sunni Arab and secular Shiite factions demanded Thursday that an international body review election fraud complaints, and threatened to boycott the new legislature. The United Nations rejected the idea.

Their demand came two days after preliminary returns indicated that the current governing group, the religious Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, was getting bigger-than-expected majorities in Baghdad, which has large numbers of Shiites and Sunnis.

As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

The Justice Department acknowledged yesterday, in a letter to Congress, that the president's October 2001 eavesdropping order did not comply with "the 'procedures' of" the law that has regulated domestic espionage since 1978. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, established a secret intelligence court and made it a criminal offense to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant from that court, "except as authorized by statute."

There is one other statutory authority for wiretapping, which covers conventional criminal cases. That law describes itself, along with FISA, as "the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . may be conducted."

Yesterday's letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General William Moschella, asserted that Congress implicitly created an exception to FISA's warrant requirement by authorizing President Bush to use military force in response to the destruction of the World Trade Center and a wing of the Pentagon. The congressional resolution of Sept. 18, 2001, formally titled "Authorization for the Use of Military Force," made no reference to surveillance or to the president's intelligence-gathering powers, and the Bush administration made no public claim of new authority until news accounts disclosed the secret NSA operation.

But Moschella argued yesterday that espionage is "a fundamental incident to the use of military force" and that its absence from the resolution "cannot be read to exclude this long-recognized and essential authority to conduct communications intelligence targeted at the enemy." Such eavesdropping, he wrote, necessarily included conversations in which one party is in the United States.

To the Editor:

Let's say that you are the president of the United States and you are given a briefing that says a known terrorist who has struck America's interests in the past is determined to strike within the United States' borders. What do you do?

If you are George Bush you do not go into a state of "high alert." You go cut brush on your ranch since it is August 2001 and you are on vacation.

Roger A. Binion
Moscow, Dec. 22, 2005

I think the change began in 1980, when my parents both became Reagan Democrats. My mother took me with her into the booth when she voted for Mondale in 1984 (she was still an anti-nuke activist then, after all), but when talk radio exploded in the late '80s, it caught my parents and took them away. The people who drove me all over the American Southwest in their 1971 VW bus to visit our national parks were replaced with RNC talking-points pod people. As a result, I don't just tune out O'Reilly and the rest of the Republican screaming heads. No, I don't just tune them out: I hate them. I hate them with the same passion and the same fury that my dad exploded at me, because before those people got rich exploiting Karl Rove's (er, excuse me, I mean George Bush's) black-and-white, with-us-or-against-us fantasy world, my parents and I could discuss issues and amicably agree to disagree with each other.

But not anymore. I thought Tookie Williams was probably guilty and deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison. I wasn't defending him; I was just voicing my opposition to the death penalty. My dad acted as if I loaded the gun for Tookie and helped him aim it at my sister. We weren't able to have a respectful discussion about the death penalty, because my dad wouldn't allow it. Bill O'Reilly must be so proud of the world he's helped to create.

Now here is the terrifying thing: my dad is a really smart guy. He's so smart, in fact, he should see right through it when these right-wing noise-machine guys throw out facts in favor of emotional arguments to manipulate their audience. He should know when Rush is full of shit the same way I know when Michael Moore is full of shit. He is a perfusionist who holds people's lives in his hands every single day when they have open-heart surgery. He helped develop a process called ECMO for newborns, which reduced the infant mortality rate by something like 90 percent. He is a brilliant accountant, too, handling all the finances for everyone in the family, while running his own very successful business. And he is a great dad. He loves all of us (and my brother, sister and I all love him), and there is nothing in the world I like more than getting a call from my dad to blow off work and go to a Dodgers game together, so we can holler at the bums from right behind their dugout, where my family has had seats since the stadium opened. He's also a surfer, a fly-fisherman and a hell of a blackjack player. If I haven't made it clear, I love and admire my dad ... but when it comes to politics, whatever critical-thinking ability he has just vanishes, and he becomes an editorial cartoon caricature.

[snip]

I want to make something clear, here: I know I'm not the only 33-year-old liberal who has watched his parents grow older and more conservative, and I know that I'm not the first guy to have political disagreements with his father. In fact, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with people who don't see the world the same way I do. My best friend, a libertarian who thinks he's a Republican, is living proof. But I also think it's worth identifying who is really waging the war on Christmas -- and it's not Target, for having the temerity to wish its shoppers "Happy Holidays." And it's not people like me, who use "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings" interchangeably, hoping that the recipient of my good wishes will understand that I'm really saying, "I'm not religious, but I hope you have joy and love in your life, good health and happiness." The one waging the war is right-wing talk radio and its relentless drive to polarize and divide our country, and our holiday dinners, and make a nice profit while it does. Come to think of it, maybe I'll get my dad an iPod and a stack of Surf CDs for Christmas. It'll be a gift for both of us.

It doesn't get covered by the corporate media (imagine that), but mainstream polls consistently find that big majorities of Americans are not meek centrists, but overt, tub-thumping, FDR progressives who are seeking far more populist gumption and governmental action than any Democratic congressional leader or presidential contender has dared to imagine. In recent polls by the Pew Research Group, the Opinion Research Corporation, the Wall Street Journal, and CBS News, the American majority has made clear how it feels. Look at how the majority feels about some of the issues that you'd think would be gospel to a real Democratic party:

65 percent say the government should guarantee health insurance for everyone -- even if it means raising taxes.

86 percent favor raising the minimum wage (including 79 percent of selfdescribed "social conservatives").

60 percent favor repealing either all of Bush's tax cuts or at least those cuts that went to the rich.

66 percent would reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

77 percent believe the country should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment.

87 percent think big oil corporations are gouging consumers, and 80 percent (including 76 percent of Republicans) would support a windfall profits tax on the oil giants if the revenues went for more research on alternative fuels.

69 percent agree that corporate offshoring of jobs is bad for the U.S. economy (78 percent of "disaffected" voters think this), and only 22% believe offshoring is good because "it keeps costs down."

69 percent believe America is on the wrong track, with only 26 percent saying it's headed in the right direction.

Americans might not call themselves progressive -- but there they are. On the populist, pocketbook issues that are rooted in our nation's core values of fairness and justice, there's a progressive super-majority. It flourishes in red states as well as blue, cutting through the establishment's false dichotomy of liberal/ conservative.

Two days after a U.S. judge struck down the teaching of intelligent design theory in a Pennsylvania public school, the journal Science on Thursday proclaimed evolution the breakthrough of 2005.

Wide-ranging research published this year, including a study that showed a mere 4 percent difference between human and chimpanzee DNA, built on Charles Darwin's landmark 1859 work "The Origin of Species" and the idea of natural selection, the journal's editors wrote.

Officials are investigating the theft of 400 pounds of high-powered plastic explosives in New Mexico. The material was stolen from a bunker owned by a bomb expert who works at a national research lab outside Albuquerque, N.M.

ABC News has been told it's one of the most significant thefts of high-power explosives ever in the United States.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed today they are investigating the large theft from Cherry Engineering, a company owned by Chris Cherry, a scientist at Sandia National Labs.

The theft was discovered Sunday night by local authorities. The thieves used blowtorches to cut through thick steel walls at the bunker, authorities told ABC News.

The missing 400 pounds of explosives includes 150 pounds of what is known as C-4 plastic, or "sheet explosive," which can be shaped and molded and is often used by terrorists and military operatives.


"It is a very dangerous material, we want to keep this off the streets," Cherry told ABC News.

Also, 2,500 detonators were missing from a storage explosive container, or magazine, in a bunker owned by Cherry Engineering.

Authorities have no leads in the theft and said there is no indication terrorism is involved.

Not long after I'd swallowed this bitter pill, I was invited onto Scarborough Country on MSNBC to debate the proposition that reindeer were an ancient symbol of Christianity and thus deserving of First Amendment protection, if not indeed of mandatory display at every mall in the land. I am told that nobody watches that show anymore—certainly I heard from almost nobody who had seen it—so I must tell you that the view taken by the host was that coniferous trees were also a symbol of Christianity, and that the Founding Fathers had endorsed this proposition. From his cue cards, he even quoted a few vaguely deistic sentences from Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, neither of them remotely Christian in tone. When I pointed out the latter, and added that Christmas trees, yule logs, and all the rest were symbols of the winter solstice "holidays" before any birth had been registered in the greater Bethlehem area, I was greeted by a storm of abuse, as if I had broken into the studio instead of having been entreated to come by Scarborough's increasingly desperate staff. And when I added that it wasn't very Tiny Tim-like to invite a seasonal guest and then tell him to shut up, I was told that I was henceforth stricken from the Scarborough Rolodex. The ultimate threat: no room at the Bigmouth Inn.

This was a useful demonstration of what I have always hated about the month of December: the atmosphere of a one-party state. On all media and in all newspapers, endless invocations of the same repetitive theme. In all public places, from train stations to department stores, an insistent din of identical propaganda and identical music. The collectivization of gaiety and the compulsory infliction of joy.

[snip]

And yet none of this party-line unanimity is enough for the party's true hard-liners. The slogans must be exactly right. No "Happy Holidays" or even "Cool Yule" or a cheery Dickensian "Compliments of the season." No, all banners and chants must be specifically designated in honor of the birth of the Dear Leader and the authority of the Great Leader.

By chance, the New York Times on Dec. 19 ran a story about the difficulties encountered by Christian missionaries working among North Korean defectors, including a certain Mr. Park. One missionary was quoted as saying ruefully that "he knew he had not won over Mr. Park. He knew that Christianity reminded Mr. Park, as well as other defectors, of 'North Korean ideology.' " An interesting admission, if a bit of a stretch. Let's just say that the birth of the Dear Leader is indeed celebrated as a miraculous one—accompanied, among other things, by heavenly portents and by birds singing in Korean—and that compulsory worship and compulsory adoration can indeed become a touch wearying to the spirit.

Our Christian enthusiasts are evidently too stupid, as well as too insecure, to appreciate this. A revealing mark of their insecurity is their rage when public places are not annually given over to religious symbolism, and now, their fresh rage when palaces of private consumption do not follow suit. The Fox News campaign against Wal-Mart and other outlets—whose observance of the official feast-day is otherwise fanatical and punctilious to a degree, but a degree that falls short of unswerving orthodoxy—is one of the most sinister as well as one of the most laughable campaigns on record. If these dolts knew anything about the real Protestant tradition, they would know that it was exactly this paganism and corruption that led Oliver Cromwell—my own favorite Protestant fundamentalist—to ban the celebration of Christmas altogether.

When chief Washington Post pollster Richard Morin appeared for an online chat, a reader from Naperville, Ill., asked him why the Post hasn't polled on impeachment. "This question makes me mad," Morin replied. When a second participant made the same query, Morin fumed, "Getting madder." A third query brought the response: "Madder still."

In glimpses and in glaring detail, the videotape images reveal the robust presence of disguised officers or others working with them at seven public gatherings since August 2004.

The officers hoist protest signs. They hold flowers with mourners. They ride in bicycle events. At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, "I am a shameless agitator." She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.

Beyond collecting information, some of the undercover officers or their associates are seen on the tape having influence on events. At a demonstration last year during the Republican National Convention, the sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders.

Until Sept. 11, the secret monitoring of events where people expressed their opinions was among the most tightly limited of police powers.

Provided with images from the tape, the Police Department's chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, did not dispute that they showed officers at work but said that disguised officers had always attended such gatherings - not to investigate political activities but to keep order and protect free speech. Activists, however, say that police officers masquerading as protesters and bicycle riders distort their messages and provoke trouble.

The pictures of the undercover officers were culled from an unofficial archive of civilian and police videotapes by Eileen Clancy, a forensic video analyst who is critical of the tactics. She gave the tapes to The New York Times. Based on what the individuals said, the equipment they carried and their almost immediate release after they had been arrested amid protesters or bicycle riders, The Times concluded that at least 10 officers were incognito at the events.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, officials at all levels of government considered major changes in various police powers. President Bush acknowledged last Saturday that he has secretly permitted the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a warrant on international telephone calls and e-mail messages in terror investigations.

In New York, the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg persuaded a federal judge in 2003 to enlarge the Police Department's authority to conduct investigations of political, social and religious groups. "We live in a more dangerous, constantly changing world," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said.

Before then, very few political organizations or activities were secretly investigated by the Police Department, the result of a 1971 class-action lawsuit that charged the city with abuses in surveillance during the 1960's. Now the standard for opening inquiries into political activity has been relaxed, full authority to begin surveillance has been restored to the police and federal courts no longer require a special panel to oversee the tactics.

Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, said the department did not increase its surveillance of political groups when the restrictions were eased. The powers obtained after Sept. 11 have been used exclusively "to investigate and thwart terrorists," Mr. Browne said. He would not answer specific questions about the disguised officers or describe any limits the department placed on surveillance at public events.

9/11 changed everything. Suddenly the he-men of WalMart and the NRA leaped into Big Brother's arms and shrieked "save me, save me! Do what ever you have to do, they're trying to kill us all!" They now look to Daddy Government not to discipline the children, but to check under the bed for them every night, reassure them that the boogeyman won't hurt them and then read them a nice bedtime story about spreading freedom and democracy. It turns out that underneath all this swaggering bravado, the Republicans aren't the Daddy party --- they're the baby party.

This article in the Boston Globe from yesterday (via Maha in this terrific post) gets to what I think is the central problem with this country's response after 9/11; the alleged super-hawks who were leading this country wet their pants with fear and behaved like frightened children:

In march of 1933, Franklin Roosevelt, facing the crisis of the Great Depression, said in his inaugural address that ''the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

The fear people felt then was not nameless, unreasoning, nor unjustified, as Roosevelt well knew. In fact, his address went on to say that ''the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone . . . Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment."

What Roosevelt meant was that fear can distort judgment and cloud the mind's ability to perceive right turns from wrong turns in the road to safety.

[...]

The Bush administration's predilection to torture was clearly a result of mind-clouding fear caused by the greatest terrorist attack in history on Sept. 11th, 2001. The same can be said of the excesses of the Patriot Act, and, too, the decision to use the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens without benefit of warrant as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The Bush administration has shamelessly used fear to get its way. Both the president and vice president have tried to picture a withdrawal from Iraq as resulting in an Al Qaeda takeover of Iraq, and an Al Qaeda-led Caliphate stretching across the Muslim world. In reality al Qaeda hasn't the remotest chance of taking over Iraq, not with 80 percent of the population either Kurdish or Shi'ite, and a timely end to American occupation might sooner lead to an Iraqi-Sunni disenchantment with foreign terrorists.

Of course, the right has traded on fear for so long that we can hardly remember a time when they didn't. If it isn't the commies, it's the hippies or the ATF or the terrorists. And as Kevin points out they make these ridiculous decisions over and over again because they are essentially afraid of their own shadows:

[snip]

This idea that we are living in a unique time that calls for special measures is what they always say. (And this current fantasy about the unique threat that proved our oceans couldn't protect us is particularly rich considering they fearmongered a communist threat of total annihilation for decades.) Often cooler heads are able to quell the worst excesses (like the fervent belief that we needed to launch a tactical nuclear war against the commies) and satisfy the right wing's other ongoing paranoid fantasy --- the left as a fifth column --- with silly, wasteful surveillance of animal rights groups or Quakers or former Beatles (along with pernicious surveillance of their partisan opponents.)

They are rhinestone cowboys who are scared to death and don't know how to contain their fear. So they lash out at their domestic political enemies, who they can bluster about and pretend to be tough, while hiding behind the military uniforms of their Big Brother and Preznit Daddy (which is a real stretch when it comes to Junior.)

The fact that they continue to win elections as being the tough guys perhaps says more about our puerile culture than anything else. They lash out like frightened children and too many people see that as courage or resolve.

Violent Islamic fundamentalism is a serious problem, not an existential threat. And it's a difficult problem that requires adults who can keep their heads about them when the terrorists put on their scary show, not big-for-their-age eight year olds staging a temper tantrum.

Now before you start to think I'm channeling the spirit of Michael Moore, let's talk about where I am coming from. In the 90's I became much more politically aware, and found myself quite on the conservative side of things. I listened to Rush, Quinn, and disliked Clinton. My views today are still very much the same. During that era I feared the growing power of government, the massive amounts of executive orders Clinton was signing, eroding the Constitution, and even giving FEMA the power to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law without congressional oversight. I saw Waco and learned how dangerous and out of control a power hungry government can be, especially when faced with discontents. In some of the more extreme right wing circles it was felt that massive resistance (even armed resistance) might soon be necessary to defend our liberties and rights from an increasingly out of control government.

Then 9/11 happened.

All of the right wing talk show hosts, all of the pundits, people I knew in the conservative community, all seemed to turn on a dime. I almost feel I don't know these people anymore. It seems now they feel government cannot have nearly enough power. Secret courts, secret warrants, secret prisons, suspect torture, massive data gathering on all aspects of US citizens including medical records, library records, and financial records are all wonderful things.

[snip]

People who once proudly quoted Franklin's "Those who give up essential liberty for a little safety deserve neither" now cheerlead the executive branch on in removing any judicial oversight, congressional oversight, and in fact ANY oversight (as most of these laws are secret) from the land. Far from the transparent government the founders imagined, we are now entering a system where laws are kept secret, prosecutions are kept secret, and national security is a password to removing any and all liberty that stands in the way of anything government wishes to do.

The Republican-controlled Senate passed legislation to cut federal deficits by $39.7 billion on Wednesday by the narrowest of margins, 51-50, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the deciding vote.

The measure, the product of a year's labors by the White House and congressional Republicans, imposes the first restraints in nearly a decade of federal benefit programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and student loans.

By themselves, the deficit cuts included in the five-year bill would amount to only 2.5 percent of projected shortfalls totaling $1.6 trillion over the same time frame. Republicans said the significance lies in more than mere numbers, adding that programs such as Medicare and Medicaid threaten to consume an unsustainable amount of federal revenue if their growth is not trimmed quickly.

Home health care payments under Medicare would be frozen at current levels for a year under the bill, Medicaid regulations would be changed to make it harder for the elderly to qualify for federal nursing home benefits by turning assets over to their children.

Lender subsidies are reduced as part of an attempt to squeeze $12.6 billion from student loan programs. Another provision raises $3.6 billion for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the federal agency that protects certain pension plans. The money would come from an increase in the premium employers pay for each covered worker or retiree, and from a fee on companies that end their pension plans.

Billions more would come from programs unrelated to benefit programs. The legislation assumes $10 billion in federal receipts from the sale of part of the analog spectrum, for example.

All 44 Democrats voted against the measure, as did Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont, an independent. Five of 55 Republicans crossed party lines to oppose the bill as well. They were Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. Of them, Chafee, DeWine and Snowe are seeking re-election next year.

Season Greetings Geniuses, Philosopher Kings and Queens, Working Class Heroes, Progressive Utopians with no sense of humor and of course you lurking Conservatives,

The dream is over. What can I say?

I’m back in LA with two of my three feral cats trying to integrate with the two cats I have here. It’s live Animal Planet every day in my house. I assume that they’ll eventually get the hang of each or kill each other off. I will try to step in if it looks like nature is taking the latter course.

Thank you all for all your support over the last 22 months or a part of that (if you have no idea what I’m talking about because you never knew I hosted “Morning Sedition” on Air America Radio, then hold out because there will be info for you as well).

Here’s what happening in the next month or so:

• I’m going to get to know my wife
• I’m going to buy a car. (I promise I will do the right thing here)
• I’m going to update my web site. (Give me a break. I’ve been doing morning radio for the last year and half. I have had time for nothing.)
• If all goes as planned I will have a new show on in the evenings here in LA on KTLK 1150 with Jim Earl and Brendan McDonald by the end of the month. The show will include the work of Kent Jones, Mike Ferucci and Bruce Cherry. There will be new contributors from the talent pool out here and as you know that is an Olympic size pool. We will be providing some separate content for Air America Mornings in NYC and for the web site. We will also be air some time on the weekends in New York.
• I promise to podcast.
• I will be updating you as to the progress on the new show as will as live shows wherever they may be as well as TV appearances,
• My new CD comes out soon. I’ll let you know about that.
• When the site is re-built I’ll put some kind of blog up there. That will make it easier.

IF ANYONE HAS AN IDEA FOR A SHOW TITLE, SEND IT TO MARC@MARCMARON.COM

This has been a horrendous few months for me. I am emotionally drained and furious about what went down at Air America. Hopefully, I’ll be back on the airwaves soon. Again, thanks to all of you. There was no way the show would have been as great as it was if I didn’t know you all were out there digging it.

Maron

P.S. If all this is meaningless to you and you never listened to the show I’ll turn you on to the new show and we’ll move ahead from there.

The top of the Drudge Report claims “CLINTON EXECUTIVE ORDER: SECRET SEARCH ON AMERICANS WITHOUT COURT ORDER…” It’s not true. Here’s the breakdown –

What Drudge says:

Clinton, February 9, 1995: “The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order”

What Clinton actually signed:

Section 1. Pursuant to section 302(a)(1) [50 U.S.C. 1822(a)] of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance] Act, the Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order, to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year, if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that section.

That section requires the Attorney General to certify is the search will not involve “the premises, information, material, or property of a United States person.” That means U.S. citizens or anyone inside of the United States.

The entire controversy about Bush’s program is that, for the first time ever, allows warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens and other people inside of the United States. Clinton’s 1995 executive order did not authorize that.

Drudge pulls the same trick with Carter.

What Drudge says:

Jimmy Carter Signed Executive Order on May 23, 1979: “Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order.”

What Carter’s executive order actually says:

1-101. Pursuant to Section 102(a)(1) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1802(a)), the Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order, but only if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that Section.

the dynamic of a typical Bush scandal follows familiar contours...

1. POTUS circumvents the law - an impeachable offense.

2. The story breaks (in this case after having been concealed by a news organization until well after Election 2004).

3. The Bush crew floats a number of pushback strategies, settling on one that becomes the mantra of virtually every Republican surrogate. These Republicans face down poorly prepped Dem surrogates and shred them on cable news shows.

4. Rightwing attack dogs on talk radio, blogs, cable nets, and conservative editorial pages maul Bush's critics as traitors for questioning the CIC.

5. The Republican leadership plays defense for Bush, no matter how flagrant the Bush over-reach, no matter how damaging the administration's actions to America's reputation and to the Constitution. A few 'mavericks' like Hagel or Specter risk the inevitable rightwing backlash and meekly suggest that the president should obey the law. John McCain, always the Bush apologist when it really comes down to it, minimizes the scandal.

6. Left-leaning bloggers and online activists go ballistic, expressing their all-too-familiar combination of outrage at Bush and frustration that nothing ever seems to happen with these scandals. Several newspaper editorials echo these sentiments but quickly move on to other issues.

7. A few reliable Dems, Conyers, Boxer, et al, take a stand on principle, giving momentary hope to the progressive grassroots/netroots community. The rest of the Dem leadership is temporarily outraged (adding to that hope), but is chronically incapable of maintaining the sense of high indignation and focus required to reach critical mass and create a wholesale shift in public opinion. For example, just as this mother of all scandals hits Washington, Democrats are still putting out press releases on Iraq, ANWR and a range of other topics, diluting the story and signaling that they have little intention of following through. This allows Bush to use his three favorite weapons: time, America's political apathy, and make-believe 'journalists' who yuck it up with him and ask fluff questions at his frat-boy pressers.

8. Reporters and media outlets obfuscate and equivocate, pretending to ask tough questions but essentially pushing the same narratives they've developed and perfected over the past five years, namely, some variation of "Bush firm, Dems soft." A range of Bush-protecting tactics are put into play, one being to ask ridiculously misleading questions such as "Should Bush have the right to protect Americans or should he cave in to Democratic political pressure?" All the while, the right assaults the "liberal" media for daring to tell anything resembling the truth.

9. Polls will emerge with 'proof' that half the public agrees that Bush should have the right to "protect Americans against terrorists." Again, the issue will be framed to mask the true nature of the malfeasance. The media will use these polls to create a self-fulfilling loop and convince the public that it isn't that bad after all. The president breaks the law. Life goes on.

10. The story starts blending into a long string of administration scandals, and through skillful use of scandal fatigue, Bush weathers the storm and moves on, further demoralizing his opponents and cementing the press narrative about his 'resolve' and toughness. Congressional hearings might revive the issue momentarily, and bloggers will hammer away at it, but the initial hype is all the Democrat leadership and the media can muster, and anyway, it's never as juicy the second time around...

Rinse and repeat.

Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under criminal investigation, has been discussing with prosecutors a deal that would grant him a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against former political and business associates, people with detailed knowledge of the case say.

Mr. Abramoff is believed to have extensive knowledge of what prosecutors suspect is a wider pattern of corruption among lawmakers and Congressional staff members. One participant in the case who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations described him as a "unique resource."

Other people involved in the case or who have been officially briefed on it said the talks had reached a tense phase, with each side mindful of the date Jan. 9, when Mr. Abramoff is scheduled to stand trial in Miami in a separate prosecution.

What began as a limited inquiry into $82 million of Indian casino lobbying by Mr. Abramoff and his closest partner, Michael Scanlon, has broadened into a far-reaching corruption investigation of mainly Republican lawmakers and aides suspected of accepting favors in exchange for legislative work.

While he and a partner, Adam Kidan, were angling to buy the SunCruz boat fleet in 2000, Mr. Abramoff had Mr. Scanlon persuade Representative Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio, to insert negative comments about a business rival of Mr. Abramoff into The Congressional Record, under a scheme outlined in documents filed in Mr. Scanlon's criminal case.

The rival, Konstantinos Boulis, was murdered a short time later in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a twist that heightened the profile of the Miami case.

Florida prosecutors are also investigating corruption in that case, focusing on Mr. Ney and his chief of staff at the time, Neil Volz, according to people involved in the case. Mr. Volz reportedly agreed to put negative remarks about Mr. Boulis in The Congressional Record, even though Mr. Ney had no obvious reason to comment on Mr. Boulis.

Mr. Volz went on to work for Mr. Abramoff as a lobbyist.

Mr. Ney has said he was tricked by Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff into participating, and no charges have been brought against him.

When Iraqis swarmed to the polls last week to cast ballots in parliamentary elections, the Bush administration hailed a democratic victory in a region creaking under the weight of corruption, cronyism and dictatorship.

But the outcome may not be what the administration had in mind when U.S. forces swept President Saddam Hussein from power more than 2 1/2 years ago. Iraq's elections were dominated by Islamic clerics, and the incoming parliament is likely to include a large proportion of Islamist legislators, many of whom have ties to the mullahs of Iran.

In recent elections across Iraq and other countries in the region, Islamist parties have capitalized skillfully on new political freedoms to gain clout and legitimacy unprecedented in the modern Middle East. The growing strength of the religion-based parties is the single most unpredictable element in the Bush administration's grand vision to replace despots with democracy.

Whether it's the Shiite Muslim-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, Lebanon's Hezbollah, the Palestinian group Hamas or Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Islamist parties have benefited from the administration's promotion of democracy in the Arab world. But the Islamists also have gained strength from widespread opposition to U.S. policy, which has convinced some Muslims that their religion is under attack.

"U.S. foreign policy has helped directly in the rise of the Islamists," said Gamal Banna, a liberal Egyptian writer and brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. "The intervention in Iraq and the support for Israel's policies are creating so much anger in the region. The Islamists are benefiting from that anger."

Privately, U.S. officials acknowledge that they are concerned about the level of anti-Americanism and the power it has given Islamic-based parties at the ballot box, but they insist that the danger of extremist ideology can be contained.

Barry F. Lowenkron, an assistant secretary of State, referred to the risks that extremist governments — Islamic-based or not — might come to power as "bumps in the road." In an interview last week, he listed steps needed to encourage competition from secular parties in the Arab world, including the lifting of emergency laws, expansion of press freedom, allowing the right of assembly and other measures to ensure that diverse voices can be heard.

He also pointed out that there was a difference between what he called "extremists" and Islamic parties.

Still, Islamic groups present a dilemma for the United States. Although Washington historically has kept Islamists at arm's length, the widespread popular support for religious parties is difficult for any advocate of democracy to ignore.

Across the region, Islamist parties have proved themselves best poised to gain from any democratic opening. They enjoy easy access to mosques, which are virtually the only spaces where politics are publicly discussed in many Arab countries. Their slogans tap into deep religious feelings, and their legacy of social and welfare work gives them easy credibility on the street.

And Islamists have been clever in recasting themselves to suit the current mood. Many religious politicians stopped talking about Islamic republics and became unabashed democracy cheerleaders.

"We believe in democracy. The ballot box has the final say in whether you'll be ruling or not. We don't believe in any other means of taking power," Mahdi Akef, the leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, said in a recent interview. "How would I be a Muslim and abolish freedom at the same time? This is nonsense."

But many Islamic groups remain carefully ambiguous about how they plan to wield their newfound power. Some analysts believe that if Islamists felt strong enough, they would seek to curb the rights of non-Muslims and women; downgrade relations with the United States and Israel; or impose a harsh Islamic law, or Sharia. Hamas and Hezbollah, for their part, have been labeled terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.

In short, there is a real fear that Islamists will exploit democratic openings to rise gradually to power, only to dismantle those liberties once they've taken control.

According to recent press reports, Pentagon officials have been spying on what they call “suspicious” meetings by civilian groups, including student groups opposed to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual military personnel. The story, first reported by Lisa Myers and NBC News last week, noted that Pentagon investigators had records pertaining to April protests at the State University of New York at Albany and William Patterson College in New Jersey. A February protest at NYU was also listed, along with the law school’s LGBT advocacy group OUTlaw, which was classified as “possibly violent” by the Pentagon. A UC-Santa Cruz “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” protest, which included a gay kiss-in, was labeled as a “credible threat” of terrorism.

The testimony at trial stunningly revealed that Buckingham and Bonsell tried to hide the source of the donations because it showed, at the very least, the extraordinary measures taken to ensure that students received a creationist alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution.

Despite this collective failure to understand the concept of ID, which six Board members nonetheless felt was appropriate to add to ninth grade biology class to improve science education, the Board never heard from any person or organization with scientific expertise about the curriculum change, save for consistent but unwelcome advices from the District's science teachers who uniformly opposed the change....the only outside organizations which the Board consulted prior to the vote were the Discovery Institute and the TMLC, and it is clear that the purpose of these contacts was to obtain legal advice, as opposed to science education information....Nor did anyone on the Board ever contact the NAS, the AAAS, the National Science Teachers' Association, the National Association of Biology Teachers, or any other organization for information about ID or science education before or after voting for the curriculum change.

...Board members and teachers opposing the curriculum change and its implementation have been confronted directly. First, Casey Brown testified that following her opposition to the curriculum change on October 18, 2004, Buckingham called her an atheist and Bonsell told her that she would go to hell.

Although Defendants attempt to persuade this court that that each Board member who voted for the curriculum change did so for the secular purposed (sic) of of improving science education and to exercise critical thinking skills, their contentions are simply irreconcilable with the record evidence. Their asserted purposes are a sham, and they are accordingly unavailing, for the reasons that follow.

Accordingly, we find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment clause.

To briefly reiterate, we first note that since ID is not science, the conclusion is inescapable that the only real effect of the ID policy is the advancement of religion.

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption that is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to belief in a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs' scientific experts testified taht the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in relgion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-respected scientific propositions.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this came came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

Vice President (Richard B. Cheney)
Speaker of the House of Representatives (J. Dennis Hastert)
President pro tempore of the Senate (Ted Stevens)
Secretary of State (Condoleezza Rice)
Secretary of the Treasury (John W. Snow)
Secretary of Defense (Donald H. Rumsfeld)
Attorney General (Alberto Gonzales)
Secretary of the Interior (Gale Norton)
Secretary of Agriculture (Mike Johanns)
Secretary of Commerce (Carlos Gutierrez, ineligible)
Secretary of Labor (Elaine Chao, ineligible)
Secretary of Health and Human Services (Michael Leavitt)
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (Alphonso Jackson)
Secretary of Transportation (Norman Y. Mineta
Secretary of Energy (Samuel W. Bodman)
Secretary of Education (Margaret Spellings)
Secretary of Veterans Affairs (Jim Nicholson)

Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.

The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists—in fact, all American Muslims, period—have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that “the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy.” But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a “shameful act,” it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.

No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing “all necessary force” in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.

Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show.

[snip]

One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

"Just being referenced in an F.B.I. file is not tantamount to being the subject of an investigation," said John Miller, a spokesman for the bureau.

"The F.B.I. does not target individuals or organizations for investigation based on their political beliefs," Mr. Miller said. "Everything we do is carefully promulgated by federal law, Justice Department guidelines and the F.B.I.'s own rules."

As I have written on other occasions, I am not a religious man. I do not keep kosher. I do not help make up the morning minyan at the local synagogue. I do not even attend High Holiday services. So what? I’m Jewish because I say I’m Jewish. And because, quite frankly, with my face, who would believe me if I bothered to deny it? Furthermore, most Jews in America are not orthodox and can not read Hebrew or even speak Yiddish. For the most part, American Jews are circumcised, have a bar mitzvah, attend a reformed or conservative temple twice a year, and vote the straight Democratic ticket.

Also, I say I’m Jewish because I don’t wish to offend the memory of my parents by denying their religion and the religion of their parents.

Finally, I say I’m Jewish because Hitler would have said I was Jewish, and then sent me off to Auschwitz, if I hadn’t been fortunate enough to have been born in America.

That was my whole point. I was lucky to have been born to a Jewish family in a Christian nation. It was, in the main, Christian soldiers who liberated the Nazi death camps. Even if I’m not as Jewish as some of my critics would like, I still believe it behooves us to be openly grateful to our Christian neighbors -- not because we fear future pogroms -- but because it’s the decent thing to do.

Short of a last minute intervention by Rove's attorney, Fitzgerald is expected to ask a grand jury-possibly as soon as next week--the to indict Rove for making false statements to the FBI and Justice Department investigators in October 2003, lawyers close to the case say.

Moreover, Fitzgerald is said to believe that there is a possibility Rove either hid or destroyed evidence related to his role in the leak, lawyers close to the case said.

A few weeks after he took over the investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in early 2004, Fitzgerald had already become suspicious that Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney's then-chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were hindering his investigation.

[snip]

Fitzgerald was concerned that Rove had hidden or destroyed a very important document tying him to the leak. His suspicions may have been right: an email he sent to then Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in early July 2003 later proved Rove had spoken to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about Plame-a fact that Rove omitted when he was first interviewed by the FBI.

The same day Fitzgerald received the response letter from Comey the White House faced a deadline of turning over administration contacts with 25 journalists to the grand jury investigating the leak. One of the journalists cited in the subpoena sent to the White House Jan. 22, 2004 was Cooper. Three months earlier, in late 2003, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales enjoined all White House staff to turn over any communication about Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband. Gonzales' request came 12 hours after senior White House officials had been told of the pending investigation. The email Rove sent to Hadley which specifically cited "Matt Cooper from Time" never turned up in that request either, people close to the investigation said.

The Chicago prosecutor briefed the second grand jury investigating the outing last week for more than three hours. During that time, he brought them up to speed on the latest developments involving Rove and at least one other White House official, the sources said. The attorneys refused to identify the second person.

As of Friday, neither Rove nor Luskin have explained Rove's misstatements to Fitzgerald's satisfaction, those familiar with the case said. Eleventh-hour testimony from Time Magazine reporter Viveca Novak-who Luskin pointed to as a crucial witness in keeping his client out of court-does not appear to have been helpful in dodging an indictment, they added.

A woman who answered the phone at Patton Boggs, the law firm where Luskin is a partner, said Luskin would not answer specific questions about the probe.

Rove's alleged failure to disclose his conversations with Cooper and Novak and the fact that he didn't turn over the Hadley email on two separate occasions is the reason he's been in Fitzgerald's crosshairs and may end up being indicted, people close to the investigation said.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., believes President Bush is acting more like a sovereign monarch than an elected leader by authorizing the National Security Agency to listen in on Americans' phone calls.

"We have a system of law," Feingold said. "He just can't make up the law … It would turn George Bush not into President George Bush, but King George Bush."

[snip]

Feingold, who is believed to be considering a run for president in 2008, said the president has legal options to listen to American's conversations as stipulated by the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act. For example, Feingold said that in the event of an emergency, the president is allowed to eavesdrop for 72 hrs.

Feingold, the only senator who initially opposed the Patriot Act, which was designed to protect Americans from terrorism, said that the spying is indicative of a "pattern of abuse" including torture and secret prisons. The president, Feingold said is "grabbing too much power."

Feingold said aspects of the Patriot Act, like those that allow the government to access things like medical and library records, are ineffective because they "target innocent people."

"Brokeback Mountain," a tale of an affair between two gay ranch hands directed by Ang Lee, placed eighth with an estimated $2.4 million from 69 theaters, up 64 from a week earlier. The drama averaged an impressive $34,783 per theater and has taken in about $3.3 million to date. Jack Foley, president of distribution, said the film was playing well across the country and to all demographics. "Brokeback" adds 50-75 theaters Friday.

The notion that one of the three branches of our Government can claim power unchecked by the other two branches is precisely what the Founders sought, first and foremost, to preclude. And the fear that a U.S. President would attempt to seize power unchecked by the law or by the other branches – i.e., that the Executive would seize the powers of the British King – was the driving force behind the clear and numerous constitutional limitations placed on Executive power. It is these very limitations which the Bush Administration is claiming that it has the power to disregard because the need for enhanced national security in time of war vests the President with unchecked power.

But that theory of the Executive unconstrained by law is completely repulsive to the founding principles of the country, as well as to the promises made by the Founders in order to extract consent from a monarchy-fearing public to the creation of executive power vested in a single individual. The notion that all of that can be just whimsically tossed aside whenever the nation experiences external threats is as contrary to the country’s founding principles as it is dangerous.

It cannot be said that the Founders were unaware of the potential for national emergencies and external threats. They engaged in a war with the British which was at least as much of an existential threat to the Republic as those posed by 9/11 and related threats of Islamic extremism. Notwithstanding those threats, the Founders, in creating an Executive branch, sought first and foremost to ensure that the President could never wield unchecked powers which would exist above and separate from Congressionally enacted laws.

Among recent Republican Administrations, this theory of the unchecked President is not new. Digby recalls Richard Nixon's endorsement of it, and the theory came to life in the Iran-Contra scandal, where the Reagan Administration unilaterally deemed it necessary to U.S. national security to arm the Nicaraguan contras and then asserted for itself the power to circumvent the law enacted by the Congress which prohibited exactly that.

But the situation we have now is far more egregious, and far more dangerous, because the Administration is not even bothering to pretend now (as the Reagan Administration at least did) that the Executive acts undertaken really did adhere to Congressional intent, or alternatively, to the extent that such acts violated Congressional mandates, the acts were simply the by-product of overzealous and rogue officials who broke the law without the knowledge or approval of President Reagan.

The Bush Administration’s position now is almost the opposite of that posture, in that the Administration is expressly claiming that the President does have the right to violate laws of Congress because his executive power is absolute and thus cannot be restricted by anything. And rather than applying this theory of unchecked executive power to a single case (as the Reagan Administration did in Iran-contra), the Bush Administration has arrogated unto itself this monarchical power as a general proposition, applicable to each and every issue which can be said to relate, however generally, to this undeclared "war" against terrorism.

This view of the Presidency – which now exists not just in odious theory but in real, live, breathing form vested in George Bush – is precisely what the monarchy-fearing Founders insisted should never occur and, with the enactment of the U.S. Constitution, would never occur.

This absolute power claimed and enthusiastically exercised by George Bush violates not just specific Constitutional limitations, but the core principles of the Constitution: that we are a nation of laws not men; that each branch shall be "co-equal" to the others and checked and limited by the other two; and that the people shall retain ultimate power by vesting in them the right to enact supreme laws through the Congress which shall bind all other citizens, including the President.

[snip]

Both the Bush Administration’s theory of its own unchecked power and its indiscriminate and aggressive use of that power to violate Congressional law contradicts every constitutional principle created to ensure that we do not live under unchecked Executive tyranny. If the President is allowed to get away with secretly decreeing that he can violate the law and then doing exactly that, then there really are no remaining checks on Executive power -- and we have, without hyperbole, arrived at the very definition of tyranny.

The country has, more or less with a quiet complacency, stood by while this Administration imprisoned American citizens with no due process, while the Administration sanctioned torture and then used it to extract "evidence" to justify those detentions, and while the Administration exploited the fear of terrorist acts to bestow onto itself unprecedented powers.

If the naked assertion of absolute power by the Bush Administration -- and the use of that power to eavesdrop on American citizens without any judicial review -- does not finally prompt the public regardless of partisan allegiance to take a stand against this undiluted claim to real tyrannical power, then it is impossible to imagine what would ever prompt such a stand.