I've been trying to find a "realistic" candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in 2008.  But Russ Feingold keeps trying to steal my heart away with his appeals to law and order on the floor of the U.S. Senate:

The President was blunt. He said that he had authorized the NSA’s domestic spying program, and he made a number of misleading arguments to defend himself. His words got rousing applause from Republicans, and I think even some Democrats.

The President was blunt, so I will be blunt: This program is breaking the law, and this President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify this program.

How is that worthy of applause? Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed.

Congress has lost its way if we don’t hold this President accountable for his actions.

The President suggests that anyone who criticizes his illegal wiretapping program doesn’t understand the threat we face. But we do. Every single one of us is committed to stopping the terrorists who threaten us and our families.

Defeating the terrorists should be our top national priority, and we all agree that we need to wiretap them to do it. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to wiretap terrorists. But we have yet to see any reason why we have to trample the laws of the United States to do it. The President’s decision that he can break the law says far more about his attitude toward the rule of law than it does about the laws themselves.

This goes way beyond party, and way beyond politics. What the President has done here is to break faith with the American people. In the State of the Union, he also said that “we must always be clear in our principles” to get support from friends and allies that we need to fight terrorism. So let’s be clear about a basic American principle: When someone breaks the law, when someone misleads the public in an attempt to justify his actions, he needs to be held accountable. The President of the United States has broken the law. The President of the United States is trying to mislead the American people. And he needs to be held accountable.

In December, we found out that the President has authorized wiretaps of Americans without the court orders required by law. He says he is only wiretapping people with links to terrorists, but how do we know? We don’t. The President is unwilling to let a neutral judge make sure that is the case. He will not submit this program to an independent branch of government to make sure he’s not violating the rights of law-abiding Americans.

So I don’t want to hear again that this Administration has shown it can be trusted. It hasn’t. And that is exactly why the law requires a judge to review these wiretaps.

At the hearing yesterday, I reminded the Attorney General about his testimony during his confirmation hearings in January 2005, when I asked him whether the President had the power to authorize warrantless wiretaps in violation of the criminal law. We didn’t know it then, but the President had authorized the NSA program three years before, when the Attorney General was White House Counsel. At his confirmation hearing, the Attorney General first tried to dismiss my question as “hypothetical.” He then testified that “it’s not the policy or the agenda of this President to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes.”

Well, Mr. President, wiretapping American citizens on American soil without the required warrant is in direct contravention of our criminal statutes.

We need answers. Because no one, not the President, not the Attorney General, and not any of their defenders in this body, has been able to explain why it is necessary to break the law to defend against terrorism. And I think that’s because they can’t explain it.

Instead, this administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms have a pre-9/11 view of the world.

In fact, the President has a pre-1776 view of the world.

The President was right about one thing. In his address, he said “We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it.”

Yes, Mr. President. We do love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it. We will fight to defeat the terrorists who threaten the safety and security of our families and loved ones. And we will fight to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans against intrusive government power.

As the President said, we must always be clear in our principles. So let us be clear: We cherish the great and noble principle of freedom, we will fight to keep it, and we will hold this President – and anyone who violates those freedoms – accountable for their actions. In a nation built on freedom, the President is not a king, and no one is above the law.

I yield the floor.

So you're the new House Republican Majority Leader who ran as the "reform" candidate after the previous Majority Leader got in trouble bilking the DC lobbying community, what's your first move?  That's right, immediately oppose your own party's proposals for lobbying reform.  Brilliant!

This is really not a very good way to begin this hearing.

So said Sen. Arlen Specter, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The matter was the decision not to swear in the Attorney General of the United States in the Domestic Spying scandal.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER, CHAIRMAN (R-PA): So the question is, should the ruling of the chair be upheld that Attorney General Gonzales not be sworn?

HATCH (R): Aye.

GRASSLEY (R): Aye.

DEWINE (R): Aye.

GRAHAM (R): Aye.

KYL (R): Aye.

CORNYN (R): Aye.

SPECTER: By proxy, for Sen. Brownback, aye. Sen. Coburn – We’ve got enough votes already. Sen. Leahy?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY, RANKING DEMOCRAT: Emphatically, no.

KENNEDY (D): No.

BIDEN (D): No.

KOHL (D): No.

FEINSTEIN (D): No.

FEINGOLD (D): No.

SPECTER (R): Aye. The ayes have it.

FEINGOLD: Mr. Chairman, I request to see the proxies given by the Republican senators.

SPECTER: Could you repeat that Sen. Feingold?

FEINGOLD: I request to see the proxies given by the Republican senators.

SPECTER: The practice is to rely upon the staffers. But without counting that vote – Well, we can rephrase the question if there’s any serious challenge of the proxies. This is really not a very good way to begin this hearing.

Despite the posturing of Specter over the last few days, as this vote shows, the senior senator from Pennsylvania will go along with his party.  Expect nothing to come from these hearings.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found that Plame had indeed done "covert work overseas" on counterproliferation matters in the past five years, and the CIA "was making specific efforts to conceal" her identity, according to newly released portions of a judge's opinion.

Not exactly buried. Second paragraph of the Post's article tommorow.  Surveillance Net Yield Net Yields Few Suspects:

Bush has recently described the warrantless operation as "terrorist surveillance" and summed it up by declaring that "if you're talking to a member of al Qaeda, we want to know why." But officials conversant with the program said a far more common question for eavesdroppers is whether, not why, a terrorist plotter is on either end of the call. The answer, they said, is usually no.

So it begins -- the "Long War."

You know this isn't going to end anytime soon. The Defense Department's just-published Quadrennial Defense Review Report (.pdf)uses the term "the long war" repeatedly to describe the varied conflicts we are in now. The opening chapter, "Fighting the Long War," has subsections titled "Afghanistan," Iraq" and "The Fight Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq."

And in case you missed it, Bush made this endorsement Tuesday night: "Our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy -- a war that will be fought by presidents of both parties."

If you had to choose, what would you rather have: a Great War or a Long War?

The incomprable Josh Marshall alerts us to a paragraph at the end of a new update on the Libby prosecution:

Fitzgerald, who is fighting Libby's request, said in a letter to Libby's lawyers that many e-mails from Cheney's office at the time of the Plame leak in 2003 have been deleted contrary to White House policy.

Really?  You don't say.

Update 2/1/06, (4:53 PM):  Raw Story has the letter.

The map above shows rings representing the distances and geography relevant to any analysis of the ability of Israel to strike Iranian nuclear reactors and enrichment facilities.  The combat radius of Israeli F-16I Sufa fighters is 2100 Km.  The combat radius of Israeli F-15I Ra'am fighters is 2225 Km.  Israeli aircraft would have to fly over Iraqi territory in order to strike Iran, as is shown by the map. 

These facts need to be analyzed in light of recent poll data in Iraq indicating that 65% of Iraqis now oppose the U.S. occupation of Iraq. (.pdf)  If we allow Israel to strike Iran via Iraq, we can expect hell on the ground in Iraq. 

The operative fact of this year is that if Bush allows Israeli strike aircraft to overfly and refuel over Iraq, our adventure there is over.

From a thread on Free Republic discussing kidnapped reporter Jill Caroll:

To: Anti-Bubba182

Why should she be upset --- She's among friends...

I have NO sympathy for her -- sorry

3 posted on 01/30/2006 6:08:01 PM PST by conservativehusker (GO BIG RED!!!!)

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To: conservativehusker

I have read pieces in the Christian Science Monitor that were very anti-US.

Did this reporter write any articles or stories that were pro-Islamic or anti-US?

5 posted on 01/30/2006 6:13:19 PM PST by SkyPilot

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To: Anti-Bubba182

They all know the risks associated with going into any part of the middle-east. The towel-heads are doing themselves a great disservice by torturing their allies in the media.

I have sympathy for her family. It must be a living hell.

6 posted on 01/30/2006 6:14:25 PM PST by Adiemus

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To: iamowed15Kforsupport

I'm sorry, but for some reason I'm not convinced she's not faking it.

I've seen both videos. In the first, I did not see any fear in her eyes.

In the second, she seemed to me to be acting.

I base all this in the context of having watched other hostage videos and saw plenty of fear in the eyes of the captives.

10 posted on 01/30/2006 6:21:38 PM PST by FReepaholic (Proud participant in FR mass hysteria since 1998)

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To: iamowed15Kforsupport

The radical Ialamic mouthpiece, Aljazera, did not air the audio from this tape or from her previous tape. I have a strong feeling that her tears were not for herself. She just does not seem like the type of person who would have this type of fear for herself. I think she is crying in empathy from a different sort of threat.

I would love to see a lip reader's transcript of her tapes.

14 posted on 01/30/2006 6:23:17 PM PST by Jeff Gordon (Is tractus pro pensio.)

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To: iamowed15Kforsupport

My daughter would have more brains than this women shows....isn't it funny how a pro terrorist journalist can get herself into this trouble..with the very animals she has supported - then we are supposed to feel sorry for her because "what if it was my daughter" well it's not...why should I have any sympathy for a person who gives aid and comfort to the very people who have sworn to kill everyone or enslave I love

16 posted on 01/30/2006 6:28:20 PM PST by conservativehusker (GO BIG RED!!!!)

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To: iamowed15Kforsupport

She's implicit in the whole thing, when she's released she will spend the next couple of years denouncing Bush and anything western - and spending her cut of the ransom money.

23 posted on 01/30/2006 7:16:00 PM PST by norton

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Reading an account of the explosion, all I can say is Woodruff and Vogt are damn lucky they didn't join the ranks of the 61 journalists and 23 media support workers killed in Iraq since March 2003, numbers it took almost twenty years to reach in America's last major conflict, Vietnam.  The only recent conflict to take the lives of so many journalists in so short a time was an internal civil war in Algeria (58 deaths from 1993-96).  Reporters Without Borders provides a recent listing of those who've fallen.

Short on cash?  You too can help yourself from the Central Bank of Hillah, aka the South Central Office of the Coalition Provisional Authority:

Dryly written audit reports describe the Coalition Provisional Authority’s offices in the south-central city of Hillah being awash in bricks of US$100 bills taken from a central vault without documentation.  It describes one agent who kept almost US$700,000 in cash in an unlocked footlocker and mentions a US soldier who gambled away as much as US$60,000 in reconstruction funds in the Philippines.

Note that Hillah is one of the least-dangerous places in Iraq, unless you are a brick of $100 bills of taxpayer funds:

“Those deficiencies were so significant that we were precluded from accomplishing our stated objectives,” the auditors said of US officials in Hillah being unable to account for US$97 million of the US$120 million in Iraqi oil revenues earmarked for rebuilding projects.   An October 2005 audit found documentation for the spending of just US$8 million of that money.  

That's right, $97 million of $120 million totally unaccounted for.

At one point, several paying agents kept cash inside the same filing cabinet in the Hillah vault. One agent took US$100,000 from another’s stack of cash to clear his own balance.

ABC News co-anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were seriously wounded in the middle of recording a report for ABC News when an insurgent IAD went off in the midst of their report:

Vogt was filming a stand-up report with Woodruff and both were standing in the open hatch of an Iraqi military vehicle when the bomb went off.

"Immediately after the explosion he turned to his producer and said 'Am I alive?' and 'Don't tell Lee,' and then he began to cry out in excruciating pain,"

Westin, speaking Monday on "Good Morning America," said the risks news personnel face are assessed every day in a country where there were 221 attacks by explosive devices last week alone. But it's important to cover the news, he said.

221!  In one week.  Our prayers go out to Woodruff, Vogt, and everyone over there.  Its a mess.  I've had several conversations recently with a friend who returned from Iraq after a year and a half on the ground there.  The news is not good.  He never once left a building without wearing a flack jacket.  My friend ran logisitics for a large NGO doing elections work.  Apparently the most indespensible item in Iraq is a machine for counting U.S. dollars.  Nothing gets done without tons of American cash.  Carrying millions of dollars on his person was not an unheard of event. 

My friend had seen and operated in almost every hot spot in the world in the last fifteen years.  A lover of the hard life of dealing with the fallout of organized violence, Iraq wore him out.  He's done travelling for some time.