Hot off the presses--the Justice Department is looking into the leak of the NSA Spying Scandal.  How do we know?  Justice Department officials leaked the information:

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic spying program, Justice officials said Friday. The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, said the inquiry will focus on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Good idea to leak the existence of the leak investigation.  They've known about these leaks for a year at least, because the New York Times sat on the story.  Yet they didn't start an investigation right away, instead waiting an entire year before looking for the leaker.  Politics, anyone?

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.