Digby gives us this David Cole review of John Yoo's opus on the unlimited power of the Presidency in times of war.  If you want a feel for the Bush administration's current ideological view of presidential power this review will give you the basics and it ain't pretty.  I especially like the part where Yoo consulted 18th century dictionaries, parsing word definitions to show that the Constitution really didn't intend for the Congress to have any role in declaring or conducting a war. 

Is it just me or was the constitutional originalist movement ever serious or after being in power a few years has it just run its course and become a parody of what it was supposedly against?  I really can't see how a serious "original intent" constitutional scholar can look at the historical context of the founding of the Republic, yet alone the debates at the constitutional convention, and say flat out that the founding fathers, even after fighting a war against a monarch they considered a despot ,would just turn around and give monarchical powers to the president. 

As I suspected, what the NSA did when it broke the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was that it turned ECHELON, a powerful computer system capable of intercepting just about any form of electronic communication, on to the U.S.  Until recently, the government had not used the system on U.S. citizens.  A piece by Raw Story indicates that's what was done regarding the U.N. diplomats at the Security Council during the run up to war.  I'd guess that we're about to learn that the system was turned loose on the entire U.S. communications infrastructure and that the communications of every single American were scanned by this computer behemoth.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah and all the best in the New Year from RW, RM and the rest of the gang at the IRONMOUTH!!!

Interested in learning about how you can work to violate the Constitutional rights of Americans?  Do you like spying on and telling on your siblings?  Then the National Security Agency's CryptoKids^TM is for you.

Even more chilling for you parents is the NSA's Responsible Citizen page:

Americans expect NSA to conduct its missions within the law. But given the inherently secret nature of those missions, how can Americans be sure that the Agency does not invade their privacy?

The 4^th Amendment of the Constitution demands it... oversight committees within all three branches of the U.S. government ensure it... and NSA employees, as U.S. citizens, have a vested interest in upholding it. Respecting the law is only a part of gaining Americans' trust.

The American people need to know, within the bounds of operational security, what NSA does and why they do it, and how they work within the Intelligence community and the Department of Defense to protect the Nation's freedom.

With each new day, NSA is writing new and unexpected chapters. The missions have never been clearer. The challenges have never been greater. The stakes have never been higher.

Note that those ellipses are within the page itself.  WTF?  What goes in the excised parts?  They did get one thing right--with each new day, NSA is writing new and unexpected chapters.

When you read this NYT piece about our buddy Prof. Yoo, do you get the feeling that the Bush people too often look to political appointees or troll around for anyone (ie. junior Justice Department lawyer) who's willing to give them some sort of ideological justification for their actions?  

Now, is it a coincidence this is more likely to happen after a number of other more senior lawyers from other parts of the executive branch tell them they're nuts?

"Great Day for Freedom" leads to large demonstrations and charges of fraud; U.S. sees great progress and will begin withdrawing troops.

Update (12/23/05): Or, "Conditions-based Withdrawal" @Think Progress.

Breaking news that a new front has been opened in the War on Christmas....kids, cover you ears!

Update:(12/23/05): Scandal envelopes White House as Karl Rove linked to anti-Santa leaks. (Thanks Fitz!)

I look at this picture and see a man thinking, "I wish the Americans had put me in charge of things when they had the chance."  Wow, less than 1% of the vote, not even enough for a seat in the new parliament.  Whoof!  Frankly, I have no sympathy for Chalabi and think its pretty sad that his continued presence in the Iraqi government can probably be attributed to his high profile ties to the US government, the same people he occasionally attacks when he thinks it will garner him even minimal political support from Iraqis. 

Well the man has played the game and lost, now what?  I suspect he'll stick around in Iraq but it would be just as easy to move back to DC and see if Congress might keep financing his Iraqi National Congress organization or something.  Maybe his many Neo-Con patrons or the PNAC crowd will give him a job--lord knows the Iraqi people sure as hell won't!

Laura Rozen does a much better job exploring something I noted the other day which was the issue of why our new surveillance scheme hasn't led to more arrests.  Her conclusion is either the government knows there are thousands of Al-Qaeda terrorists or sympathizers in this country and somehow still hasn't bothered to pick any of them up after four years of monitoring, or they're casting such a wide net that most of what they're picking up is probably not really Al-Qaeda related at all, thus explaining their reluctance to go to a FISA court. 

 No word on whether she feels safer either way? 

Why haven't we had any terror alerts since the 2004 election?  Hmmm...

Is the Bush administration blowing smoke when it insists that counterterrorism is the main organizing principle behind U.S. foreign policy or do they just not want to debate other pressing foreign policy issues?  Hmmm....

Can we better understand the controversy over the Washington Post's "White House Briefing" blog as an inspired Brad DeLong penned Greek dialogue?  Hmmm...

Is it a coincidence that the Washington Post runs a series of articles about how the Department of Homeland Security is a big mess on the same day DHS allows us to bring nail clippers onto airplanes once again?  Hmmm...

If the initial speculation is true, I want to join with others in wishing Ted Stevens, (R-AK) a quiet and restful retirement, hopefully as far away from Washington DC as possible.

Matt Stoller at MyDD in a jab at the Washington Post polling director notes we currently live in a world where the front page of the Washington Post declares broad support for the Alito nomination while Fox News declares support for Alito has dropped dramatically.

The "All or Nothing Gang" in the Senate finally realized that they could pass an extension to the Patriot Act after all.  Seems they needed a week to make dire predictions about the collapse of the Republic before they actually got serious about the issue at hand.  Truth be told I was actually beginning to think that Senate Republicans would let it expire because they seem to love political posturing but legislating...ah, not so much.  Ask a Senior how they're coping with the new Medicare drug plan and you know what I'm talking about.

In the meantime I'm sure they're trying to figure out how to reach the four Republican Senators (yes, members of their own party) who provided the votes that prevented the Patriot Act's reauthorization. 

Both the NYTimes story and this story about Tom Delay's high-flying lobbyist supported lifestyle make me wonder about the ground rules for political reporting.  A number of years ago when I lived in Washington DC, I knew a young woman who worked for a Congressional Republican who informed me that it was common knowledge on the Hill that Newt Gingrich was having an affair with a congressional committee aide.  She told me this at a time when Mr. Gingrich had a high-profile role in leading the Republican charge against Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal, thus confirming to me the man had absolutely no shame whatsoever.  Well, Newt was undone by the 98' midterm elections but I couldn't help wondering why something that was common knowledge to anyone who worked on Capitol Hill somehow didn't make it into the news until the reports of Gingrich's second divorce.  You'd think that if the President is being hounded for lying about an adulterous affair by a blowhard who at the same time is known to be having an adulterous affair that you'd have the kind of juicy hypocritical politician story that any reporter could run with, but no.  Somehow off limits, I guess?

My question is why is it that these types of stories only come out after people like Gingrich and Delay finally get in trouble and their power and influence are on the wane?  Tom Delay's a man who has been in Congress for over twenty years much of which he's shown an utter contempt for the institution of Congress and a proclivity for unethical, possibly even criminal, behavior in pursuit of political power-- he is a known entity and a slimy one at that.  Do you think that most Capital Hill reporters were not aware of the lengths Delay went to to shakedown lobbyists and pad his pockets while creating a Republican political machine in DC?  Did they not know about the junkets until the Abramoff scandal?  Was it suddenly common knowledge after he stepped down from his leadership post that Delay is a mean son-of-a bitch who stops at absolutely nothing to maintain Republican dominance in the Congress and isn't beyond using money from his own children's charity to do it?  I know this is like everyone knowing that Richard Nixon had a well-established history of lying, scapegoating and paranoid delusion and wondering why Watergate happened but come on!

Hindsight's bitch but it ain't hindsight if somebody reports this stuff when they know about it instead of waiting for these people to do some real damage. 

For those suggesting that the President's actions have put in place a system that has become a useful tool in the "war on terror" how is it that the last four years have seen amazingly few convictions of terrorist suspects?  

Sorry,forgot about rendition and being able to send "enemy combatants" to Guantanamo without trial.  Man, its hard to keep track of whether we're winning or not when everything's so hush,hush!

If I read this Editor & Publisher story correctly, it suggests that the NY Times might have tabled the NSA story for a much longer period of time if it wasn't for the fact that that information would soon be revealed in a book coming out in January, 2006. 

What the hell is going on here?  Editors at the Times knew about this before the 2004 elections but were afraid of being run out of town like Dan Rather, then hold off afterwards because of some sort of "good faith" concern about national security but then a book is coming out so finally they release it???  Could we have found out about this ten years from now at some sort of Congressional hearing because Bill Keller was too chickenshit to publish it when it was most relevant?  No wonder the Times (especially under the leadership of Bill Keller) gets so much crap for its incompetence. 

President doesn't believe Tom Delay is innocent, he was just expressing confidence in the justice system--same justice system he chose to ignore in the name of national security.

It will be interesting to hear Jack Abramoff's story if he does decide to plead and testify especially after so many of his underlings and associates have already decided to do so.  Most news reports have rightly noted that this could be a big blow to the Republican establishment in D.C. although I'm sure at some point any Democratic lawmaker that happened to stand next to Mr. Abramoff at a Capitol Hill urinal will probably be implicated as well.   

Although the media will ultimately abdicate its watchdog title and opt for a safe but distorted "pox on both houses" type of story, Josh Marshall, who has done an amazing job of covering this over the last year, directs our attention to the fact that every single person indicted in relation to Jack Abramoff's activities has been a Republican, and almost all have strong ties to Tom Delay's political machine.  If you were to look at a chart of those with direct connections to Jack Abramoff's Indian Casino scam it is virtually all Delay or Norquist associates, and that's just the Indian Casino scam.  What is so scary about pointing out the obvious?  

Man, this was pretty predictable.  You mean purely domestic calls were also intercepted by the NSA?  I know that's hard to believe because the President, Vice-President, Attorney General, Secretary of State, assorted US Senators, as well as various pundits and commentators have all said that no such thing could ever happen, and moreover we were assured that there are definite limits being imposed on this secret surveillance program....even though we don't know by whom. 

I guess we're gonna need some new NSA shift supervisors or something to deal with the so-called technical glitches.  Of course that would never be a problem if the American people had been kept in the dark about this as the President intended.

I guess I'd expect this from the former Attorney General of the State of Texas.

I'm sure Mr.Bush had to go out of his way to lie like this to protect the American people.  After all, no American would get upset if you told him or her that the President gave the go-ahead to a secretive government agency like the NSA to possibly listen in on their phone calls or read their e-mails.  Stuff like that doesn't ever happen, right?

(via Atrios)

Update (12/20/05):  Hey, let's check out some video of one such event.

 "An open debate would say to the enemy, `Here is what we're going to do.' And this is an enemy which adjusts."

Some basic thoughts:

• I assume that an organization like Al-Qaeda has shown that it is sophisticated enough to know that we will try to monitor their activities and we have a lot of amazing technology that allows us to do just that.  Frankly they will also continue to try to find new ways to evade our surveillance whether they are aware of the extent of our capabilities or not.  They will adjust regardless of what we do because they want to survive and continue to hurt us.
• I suggest that the PATRIOT act was passed after a certain amount of open democratic debate but somehow that debate or the fact that anyone can currently purchase a copy of the act didn't explain to our enemies, "Here is what we're going to do."  As evidence that it did not signal our intentions to our enemies the Executive Branch and the Republican Congressional leadership are pushing hard to get its many provisions renewed.  Presumably if recent disclosures are true, the President wasted a lot of time asking Congress to write and pass the PATRIOT act because he already had the power to make it so through secret executive order.
• To my knowledge the US Congress has yet to have extensive open floor debates over specific methods for gathering intelligence for if I'm not mistaken most such discussion happens behind closed doors within the intelligence committees, usually in consultation with the Executive Branch.  However, I do know that Congress gets a little riled up when it finds out after the fact the President single-handedly ordered a secret program of domestic surveillance and calls for investigations and hearings naturally occur when that happens!  The "Keep Congress Out of the Loop" or "Democracy be Damned" national security crowd never seems to learn this and tend to pay for their arrogance regardless of the merits of what they propose.
• The law is pretty clear and the FISA courts almost never turned down an eavesdropping warrant so we actually need something more than well-worn platitudes that begin with "9/11" or "I did what I did to protect the American people". 

Enter the President.  Why would anyone entrust their government to a man so disinterested in or ignorant of the basic operations of democratic governance?  A man whose grasp of the situation is so simple that he is absolutely unaware he has basically admitted to criminal impeachable activity.  A man who is arrogant enough to basically not only say that he alone knows what's right for the American people, but that criticism of his inherent magnificence is clearly an attack on the will of the American people and thus illegitimate and dangerous. 

How did we get to this point and what do the next few years hold?  Seriously!

Kevin Drum offers the suggestion that since just about everyone involved in this fiasco has mentioned some sort of technical or technological imperative in defense of their actions that maybe the NSA has some sort of new data-mining capability that goes beyond our notion of wiretapping.  As Kevin notes, however, the key question is this:

"What kind of program is so intrusive that even Republicans, even with 9/11 still freshly in mind, wouldn't have supported it?"

Better yet, another question might be:

"Since the Bush Administration can count on Congressional Republicans to neither criticize nor investigate its actions, what threshold of illegality does that same Administration have to pass for Congressional Republicans to actually do something about it?"

Okay which one is right?  Bounce or no bounce?

How about a list of recent approval polls?  See any particular patterns that give a definitive answer?  Could we call this inconclusive at this point?

First the Pentagon admits they've been monitoring anti-war groups.  Then it comes out the President illegally authorized secret wiretaps using an agency that is not suppose to do domestic spying.  Now it comes out that the FBI was tasked with watching Greenpeace, PETA, Catholic Workers and some unknown vegan group?   Why???  What's next?  Who's next?

Question for the Attorney General:  Alright, who are these "certain members of Congress" you talked to and if they told you your plan would never be approved by Congress, why did you go ahead and continue with it anyway?

I read through the transcript kinda quickly but did General Hayden say that in effect an NSA shift supervisor has more power over this surveillance policy than any member of Congress or the courts?  And they think that that's legal and above board?  Man, if I hear him say "efficiency" one more time I think I'm gonna break something.