The way the government lied in the Mace Affidavit is stunning (the $5000 one-way first class ticket to Saudia Arabia was really a $1700 round trip coach ticket). The "facts" laid out in the affidavit make it sound like al-Kidd was "connected" to a very bad terrorist. Earlier posts have shown how easy it is to get a "material support" charge to stick to a suspected terrorist. That's why the footnote about the trial for which al-Kidd was wanted as a material witness is so important:

Al-Hussayen was not convicted of any of the charges brought against him. His trial ended in acquittal on the most serious charges, including conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2339A, 2339B. After the jury failed to reach a verdict on the remaining lesser charges, the district court declared a mistrial. The government agreed not to retry Al-Hussayen and deported him to Saudi Arabia for visa violations.

Your Department of Justice [sic] in action.

why we need a recess appointment of Dawn Johnsen. She needs to be on board to prevent Obama putting in place such an ill-advised (literally) program as preventive detention.

Now off to read the recommended section.

Great comment. Welcome to world of civil liberties extremists.

Drilling down a bit further on the Gallup poll data, the results when split by how closely people follow the news is revealing:

Follow news closely: 63% disapprove, 36% approve of the investigation by Holder.

Follow somewhat closely: 45% disapprove, 51% approve.

Follow not closely or at all: 34% disapprove, 57% approve.

There are more Republicans in the follow closely group than in the general population: 32% of follow closely were R's and 29% were D's. It's important to couple this result with the Research 2000 poll DailyKos published last month (link at sig). Republicans overwhelmingly watch Fox News: 25% watch it daily and 27% watch it weekly, compare to daily 8% CNN and 2% MSNBC or weekly 7% CNN or 4% MSNBC. The blatant lies and propaganda being spread by Fox News play a huge role in the public's attitude toward prosecutions.

The world is coming to an end! Bobo Brooks made sense today.

From a Tweet by Jason Leopold, we have this outstanding bit from Media Matters on yesterday's topic. Here is Ronald Reagan lecturing middle school students in a speech broadcast by the Instructional Television Network to schools nationwide on three different days:

Today, to a degree never before seen in human history, one nation, the United States, has become the model to be followed and imitated by the rest of the world. But America's world leadership goes well beyond the tide toward democracy. We also find that more countries than ever before are following America's revolutionary economic message of free enterprise, low taxes, and open world trade. These days, whenever I see foreign leaders, they tell me about their plans for reducing taxes, and other economic reforms that they are using, copying what we have done here in our country.

I wonder if they realize that this vision of economic freedom, the freedom to work, to create and produce, to own and use property without the interference of the state, was central to the American Revolution, when the American colonists rebelled against a whole web of economic restrictions, taxes and barriers to free trade. The message at the Boston Tea Party -- have you studied yet in history about the Boston Tea Party, where because of a tax they went down and dumped the tea in the Harbor. Well, that was America's original tax revolt, and it was the fruits of our labor -- it belonged to us and not to the state. And that truth is fundamental to both liberty and prosperity.

There's another dandy quote from the question and answer session in the link at my name.

Positing Broder:

Oh dear, oh dear, what happens if the House doesn't follow through?

I think you pegged this when you called it concern trolling. A similar argument is being used today in the torture debate, in that some are claiming that the charges are going to be very difficult to achieve convictions on and that the right will claim vindication and moral rectitude when conviction is not achieved. That sounds very much like what Broder is saying in the old piece.

Wow, the Mullets of Moderation are certainly working themselves into a dither recently, aren't they? This particular bit from Glenn resonated with me very well because I had just said something similar in the comments in my most recent Seminal diary:

This is a vital reason -- I'd say the central reason -- why people like David Broder and his media colleagues don't want investigations and prosecutions: because they were complicit in most of it, and such proceedings would implicate them as much as the criminals themselves.

In the comments at my diary, a reader called me "shrill" (which I took as the highest sort of compliment!) because I dared to describe how Rahm Emanuel (for political reasons) and John Brennan (for neocon Kool-Aide reasons) were counseling Obama to disregard the law and the Constitution and that this lawlessness represents a great danger to our country. In response to being chastised for such shrill language, I responded that in my mind, the opposite of shrill is criminal complicity.

That "calm and quiet" you hear from Washington in response to high level criminal behavior is the sound of our country falling ever so slowly, but no less painfully, into the final stages of its existence.