I find the posts by veteran novice and Paul Rosenberg quite intriguing on the concept of NSL's being used for domestic political spying. As I was shoveling literal horses**t this morning, I was thinking about it further, and began to wonder why the fruits of this activity were not actively bandied about in the 2006 election. Two possibilities come to mind:

1) Try as they might, Rove's minions could not come up with anything beyond some already revealed cash in a refrigerator in Louisiana and they are still reeling from a bad case of reality whiplash, because there simply wasn't anything there.

2) Material has been collected, but in the grand tradition of J. Edgar Hoover, it is being used privately to hold off any real attacks on the entire cabal.

Sadly, I lean toward believing option 2 as a more complete descripton of the current course of events.

Joan Walsh posted yesterday on how this movement, the talking to Syria and the earliest rumblings from the repugs about declaring victory and getting out of Iraq might be a backdoor implementation of the recommendations of the Iraq study group. She was quick to strike that thought down. I agree that this could well be just an attempt to go through the motions of more of the ISG recommendations so that they can then be dismissed. However, let's hold out a little hope that a miracle has indeed ocurred and a bit of reality has finally descended upon the vast, desolate frontier that is Bush's brain. Only time, and concrete action in agreements with Syria and Iran on area security and agreement with Congress on funding and benchmarks will tell which way they, and we, are going. The 50-plus optimist in me hopes for the best while recent events provide little basis for that hope.

Comey should receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom both for his actions that night and his testimony today.

It would be very interesting for the committee to find out just who within the Justice Department was responsible for the legal opinions that Comey testified were the basis for his refusing to sign the wiretap authorizations. I'll wager good money not a single person involved in that interpretaton is still employed there. If so, their testimony on their dismissal would be enlightening.

I just did a search on Goldsmith and Philbin after reading the transcript. As suggested in my earlier post, both have quit in disgust long ago:http://tinyurl.com/34q2qv

temperance: The AP headlines are getting a little more agressive, mentioning pressure on an ill Attorney General. Also, CNN now has a story on the testimony, complete with video of Comey's description of the hospital confrontation.

kovie: I share your hope that this is a tipping point. Let's hope it's truly the beginning of the end of this nightmare for the world (the end being the removal of the entire Bush cabal) and finally the end of the beginning. The many separate efforts that have been underway to fully document the criminal acts by this group of thugs appear to be coming together in wonderfully reinforcing fashion. It's now time to move to "next steps" toward impeachment. Large scale demonstrations, coordinated inundation of MSM with LTE's demanding action and deluging of Congress with demands to join in impeachment are all warranted at this time.

In the update in Glenn's post yesterday, Tony Snow is quoted:

This is a program that saved lives...

Compare that to the quote from Jay Rockefeller in today's post: For the past six months, I have been requesting without success specific details about the program, including: how many terrorists have been identified; how many arrested; how many convicted; and how many terrorists have been deported or killed as a direct result of information obtained through the warrantless wiretapping program.

The disconnect between these two statements is jarring and simply drives home the point that everything this administration undertakes is based on their self-assured authority and that no oversight is to be allowed. This can be in no way construed to be the actions of a democratic republic. Our country has slipped away from us.

Oh, I know their filters are not very good. I still can't believe I didn't have the FBI visiting my company in late 2001 during the anthrax crisis. We were exchanging DNA sequence information with a group in the UK on a protein that had remarkable homology to one of the anthrax toxins. The same week, one of my scientists, who was home to work out some family matters, emailed from Iran to ask if our cultures had sporulated yet. Of course, we were culturing material for control of plant pests, but that wasn't obvious from the email itself.

The poor filters for general gathering of information doesn't prevent them being very efficient at targeted eavesdropping. Using this information in the tradition of J. Edgar Hoover to suppress adversaries is what I, and a growing number of other posters, fear.

If Ondelette is holding them off, does that make her Agent 99?

Sorry.

I realize this is just wishful thinking, but wouldn't it be wonderful if Muhammad Yunus became the replacement?

As I see the unfolding of an extremely complicated network of illegal spying programs, the whole thing begins to look a lot like the network of offshore entities Enron used to hide its losses. Maybe Kenny-boy shared more than energy policy in those secret meetings with Cheney.

It's my understanding that a closed-door meeting with Comey already has been scheduled by the Senate Judiciary Committee, although I don't recall the date for which it is scheduled.