Addington, along with Cheney, worked on the 1987 Congressional minority report on Iran-Contra that thought that Congress was in the wrong and that

"[T]he Chief Executive will on occasion feel duty bound to assert monarchical notions of prerogative that will permit him to exceed the laws."

It is a lovely find, but it's not mine. The authors of Unchecked and Unbalanced pointed that out.

The book is framed around how the current administration is seeking to undue the restrictions that were put on the power of the Excutive as a result of the excesses that were uncovered by the Church Committee.

Another thing in the book I was glad to see is that the authors bring up the use of Executive Orders as a form of executive branch law making.

"The executive’s power to enact general rules without legislation shifts the balance of constitutional power dramatically toward the presidency. The executive branch gains the initiative, and Congress and the courts are forced to react to its innovations. Extraordinary renditions, moreover, involves a form of secret lawmaking, which shifts the balance of power even further. The executive branch can change the nation’s legal landscape without the knowledge or consent of either legislators or the general public. Whatever the merits of presidential lawmaking in general, secret executive orders describing general policies in derogation of known and public law cannot be justified under our constitutional order."

I've been saying for a while now that we're in desperate need of someone to do for executive orders what Charlie Savage has done for signing statements.

The abuses uncovered by the Church Committee were waged mostly by secret executive order.

Also, in one of Woodward's books he mentions that the White House didn't want the (if I recall correctly) 9/11 Commission to turn into another Church Commitee.

"Real Men": How fat, lazy, cowardly, stupid, corrupt, craven liars in the GOP pretend to be something they're not.

Or something like that. That's after about 5 seconds of thought. I'll brainstorm some more.

Nonetheless, as is true for their oh-so-solemn concern for gay and women's rights in Iran ...

Not even that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61275-2002Jun16?language=printer

Conservative U.S. Christian organizations have joined forces with Islamic governments to halt the expansion of sexual and political protections and rights for gays, women and children at United Nations conferences.

The new alliance, which coalesced during the past year, has received a major boost from the Bush administration, which appointed antiabortion activists to key positions on U.S. delegations to U.N. conferences on global economic and social policy.

But it has been largely galvanized by conservative Christians who have set aside their doctrinal differences, cemented ties with the Vatican and cultivated fresh links with a powerful bloc of more than 50 moderate and hard-line Islamic governments, including Sudan, Libya, Iraq and Iran.

To reiterate what a couple of other commenters have said, Chalmers Johnson has identified Feinstein as being beholden to the military industrial complex.

Spocko noticed a local Fox radio host saying:

"Does the fact that only Barak Obama is so er well that the only presidential candidate that will appear on Oprah's show, does that make her a Nazi racist? Is it mutually exclusive that a black woman can be a also a Nazi? I don't think so. I frankly think she is a Nazi"

http://www.spockosbrain.com/2007/09/fox-radio-host-calls-oprah-nazi-racist

It has also long been common for the hard right in the GOP (increasingly difficult to distinguish from the "center" of the party) to call such gov't agencies as the EPA and IRS gestapo, fascist, and SS or some such.

I did not read the comments so someone may have already said this. If so, sorry.

This is last night's Talking Point about Jimmy Carter saying the U.S. now engages in torture.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,301375,00.html

Now, I can't read his mind, but I'll admit that President Carter thinks anything other than name, rank, and jihad number qualifies as torture.

So although O'Reilly can't read Carter's mind, he somehow does it anyway. Nevermind that. "Name, rank, and jihad number" is the straw-man position that O'Reilly trots out anytime anyone objects to illegal "enhanced interrogation". Does O'Reilly think that until Bush's lawyers attempted to legalize what had previously been illegal that the United States was unable to effectively interrogate prisoners? Or does O'Reilly think that al Qaeda are some kind of superhuman brand of Evil that somehow sets them apart from every other enemy that United States has ever had.

It's a false dichotomy. One could equally suggest that O'Reilly thinks that either we beat prisoners to death (like the one who died at Bagram from blunt force trauma to his leg) or we never get any intelligence.

I marvel - marvel - at how stupid O'Reilly is. What does he think of the people who wrote the Army Field Manual on interrogation? Were they all far leftist who think anything other than "name, rank, and jihad number" is torture?

Could a quote possibly more accurately describe O'Reilly?

"The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition" - Theodore Adorno

Hofstadter uses that Adorno quote in The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

Hofstadter is clearly quoting Adorno. The text says he is quoting Adorno. His footnot at the end of the quotation is to The Authoritarian Personality by Adorno.

It's Adorno.