Oomoex....

I think you've formed an opinion about Sheehan without really listening to her, and I rather wish you would. Thom Hartmann regularly plays a clip of her quoting Bush's ghostwriter wherein Bush says what a dandy political move it would be to invade Iraq, for political capital to "have a successful presidency," back in 1998. No one else ever talks about this damning, and revealing fact publicly. Say what you will about her "experience," but I value her, and her voice, for the fact that she gets it, a sadly rare quality in our current crop of politicians.

I don't expect her to beat Pelosi, although I'd give anything for her to do so, but the value of hearing her inconvenient truths and giving the insiders a scare will benefit our political system beyond measure.

What, exactly, is accomplished by dismissing her out of hand, when Pelosi is clearly worse than a cipher in her powerful (in other hands, maybe...) post?

I don't get it. Miss "off the table" is s'wonderful?

The high (or low) comedy of this episode is that the hotel industry claims to be "torn" over this requirement to turn over communications to the Chinese government. Really? What is it about the hospitality industry that makes it so squeamish? Or is it, as others have hinted, the fact that they have to inform their guests that they will be spied upon, thus potentially leading to annoying complaints and perhaps profit-threatening cancellations? Imagine how differently ATT and Verizon et al would have reacted to their new government business had they been required to inform their customers that all communications would be routed through Cheney's Fourth Branch? I bet their "patriotism" would have sailed right out the window.

The crime the Chinese are committing here, which clearly gives Brownback the vapors, is actually informing the victim of the crime in advance. Government spying must never occur in the open; if it does, what good is it? The information gathered will be much less interesting, and the poor dupes paying for it might balk.

On some level, Brownback is right to be appalled; those danged commies just can't seem to get this despotism thing right.

Sadly, without much in between. Starting with an early overdose of "Captain America" in his formative years, and a dementia-inducing Limbaugh/Fox addiction that continues to this day, this woefully naive cretin somehow has arrived at the laughably idiotic notion that what the NSA, Bush, etc. "do" has anything whatever to do with preventing terrorism.

It seems cruel, but necessary, to point out that when Bin Laden's intentions were all but spray-painted on Bush's forehead, he chose to do less than nothing, and send his minions to plan out how they might capitalize on this event that "no one could have predicted." The myriad intrusions on civli liberties and unprecedented arrogations of power fell like rain, both before and after Bush had neatly folded our protective umbrella, converting the CIA and NSA into totalitarian domestic spy agencies focused entirely on "enemies" at home, and bungling and ignoring everything else.

The "partnerships" with telecoms, which our dear deluded one treats as some sacrosanct necessity, are nothing more than the same stinky and corrupt collusions they were in the dark days of Nixon and J Edgar, used for the same ends the dictators they loved and emulated used them. It's as simple as that.

It is kind of sweet, though, in the same way that children believe in the Easter Bunny, to think that there are some Americans so innocent as to believe that Bush and Company are merely struggling to protect us all from untimely deaths, valiantly battling the nitpicky law and almost commie constitution to do so.

They would never, ever be doing what EVERY right-wing authoritarian, throughout history, has done with such powers.

Only an America-hating, ought-to be-shot-in their-church LIBERAL would ever think such a thing.

It's interesting that aside from a few perfunctory yelps about "conspiracy theories," the usual suspects are oddly silent today. As an earlier commenter mentioned, and I offered in an earlier thread, it seems as though the White House and the Noise Machine have punted this one; counting on the disgracefully compromised MSM to go ahead and carry the water, gratis and unguided. Unfortunately, this strategy appears, for the moment at least, to be working.

But the unanswered questions remain, and I have some hope that much more of this will be coming out, and I'm oddly encouraged that the "P.R. campaign to top this," as Nixon put it and as the Bushies have slavishly followed, has not yet been forthcoming. It's a case of the dog that didn't bark, and it's really quite curious. I'm reminded that even at the outset, when ABC was spewing its credulous BS, the administration uncharacteristically "denied" any evidence to corroborate ABC's claims. A far cry from Cheney's "even the liberal New York Time said so" of days gone by. It's as though, even then, a cabal that would lie when the truth would sound better, was afraid to step in, and their silence now speaks volumes.

What's most discouraging of course, is that the media now spout Bushite lies seemingly without needing to be goaded, threatened or fed them, in a disturbingly Pavlovian fashion.

Brian Ross rushes in where Shooter fears to tread. Ain't that the damnedest thing?

Little Brother... All this time I was laboring under the theory that Shooter was Dick Cheney; maybe the name fooled me. Your theory about how media stars morph into trolls to, uh, "salvage" their trampled credibility certainly carries some weight, considering a memorable evening on this thread wherein a pompous, fact-free gasbag who sounded a lot like Tom Friedman sauntered in to zealously defend... Tom Friedman. BTW... My own "Little Brother" and I are the same age until Tuesday, a circumstance for which I blame the Pope.

Thanks to Jim White, lcr, Mona, Jestalpero, and others for doing yoemen's work digging into this.

Glenn owes y'all a dinner, or at least drinks.