But by this reasoning, NYC Mayors should stay at home every night in order not to incur additional expenses from leaving the Mayor's mansion. What if went to baseball games every night instead, or to the opera, or bowling with friends every night?

But that is not the same reasoning. The difference, Glenn, is that those are legitimate activities you mention.

The reason it's a scandal is self-evident: his administration engaged in false accounting to cover up his adulterous affair. I don't think anyone is trying to say it's something that it isn't. He's a presidential candidate, and if true, these charges call his character, honesty, integrity, and judgment into serious doubt. And, as always when it involves a GOP politician, it raises the issue of "values party" hypocrisy.

It is not comparable to the Clinton impeachment fiasco because, well, Giuliani cannot be impeached because he doesn't hold office. It's not an attempt to remove a duly elected, overwhelmingly popular president from office on dubious grounds. That really makes all the difference in the world.

(Sorry if this was already covered - I don't have time to read all the comments.)

Glenn on Monday:

Their [journalists'] predictions (i.e., preferences and love affairs) so plainly drive their press coverage -- the candidates they love are lauded as likely winners while the ones they hate are ignored or depicted as collapsing -- which in turn influences the election in the direction they want, making their predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Glenn today:

[Journalists] are chronically wrong, ill-informed, and humiliated when they do it. It would all be just as inappropriate and corrupt even if they knew what they were talking about, even if they were able to convert their wishes into outcomes.

So, are the media shaping the outcomes, or having no effect? You seem to be arguing both ways.

The WSJ editorial frames the issue thusly:

The debate concerns an effort to revise the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to bless spying without a court order on terrorist communications that originate overseas but move through U.S. switching networks.

This sounds to me like the familiar scenario "Terrorist 1 in a foreign country calls Terrorist 2 also in a foreign country, but the NSA can't intercept that call without a warrant because the signal is routed through a network in the US, thus requiring FISA review." Is that really what the debate is about?

Because, I don't have a problem with that kind of warrantless surveillance, since neither person is a US citizen or a person in the US. I don't know any rational person who thinks otherwise.

I thought this was about communications between a person abroad and a person in the US. Yeah, that's gotta go through FISA, even if "Osama's calling." Am I missing something here?

Thanks for the clarification, Glenn.

A suggestion: despite space concerns, I think that's something your post really should address, perhaps in an update. Without rebutting that specific claim, you've basically given them a pass to misframe the issue as something completely different - which, of course, would tend to make the unsuspecting reader much more sympathetic to their argument.

We think transparency should extend to all (including Generals) commenters, while Glenn is content to stop at one very small category.

When did he say that? Links, please.

Also, I'm curious: did you ever actually read Barstow's original NYT piece? Doesn't seem like it. C'mon, be honest now!

Nice work, Glenn.

I'm astonished that, in all of the documents you have quoted and/or referenced, unless I'm wrong I have yet to see any acknowledgment by the parties that the program was likely illegal. It's not like it was some obscure statute, because as you pointed out, the Armstrong Williams affair was recent.

I've been constrained by work from examining the document dump myself - have you seen any such admissions, or efforts to conceal these actions?

Such statements don't go to culpability, of course - ignorance of the law is no excuse - but would go to proof.

The examples that DiRita argues are proof that the program was not as GG characterizes -- essentially, that because they continued dealing with some analysts who were critical (well, whom DoD claims were critical), they therefore weren't involved with weeding out the dissenters -- are completely inane. It's like saying 'I didn't rob that bank because I walked by lots of banks and didn't rob them.' And even if true, they are not exculpatory.

And this was so lame it's almost comical; in the update, he complains:

One factual error that I ask you to corect (sic): I did not tell you or anyone else that either Joe Galloway or Barry McCaffrey were part of any particular program.

That's not only parsing so extreme as to be meaningless, it's also rather undermined by the first thing he says in his first email to GG:

I'm confident in my characterizations of the intent of the program. Some of the analysts were quite favorable to the president's goals in the war, others were not.

Well, if he's not providing Galloway and McCafferey as examples of those "others" in the "program" who were "not" favorable to the "president's goals in the war", why the hell is he bringing them up?

DiRita is an idiot for sending these emails (they are also appallingly sloppy for a Fortune 500 communications rep). He needs to hire acriminal defense attorney.