Nothing wrong, unless you consider psyops against the American public something wrong. Elizabeth de la Vega has written an excellent and concise book - U.S. v Bush et al - that argues compellingly that the Bush administration was guilty of criminal conspiracy to fraud leading into the Iraq invasion.

This latest revelation (or confirmation, rather) just adds to what already should be an extremely strong case for impeachment.

The folks at the Center for Media and Democracy - who truly do greatly underappreciated work in tracking the subversion of democracy by p.r. - have written a post at their blog explaining why this activity was most likely (or is) illegal.

http://www.prwatch.org/node/7261

The Pentagon military analyst program unveiled in last week's exposé by David Barstow in the New York Times was not just unethical but illegal. It violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those restrictions, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."

As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, "publicity or propaganda" is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) "covert propaganda." By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.

There is much more at the link, including where the author reminds us that the Bush administration has already been found to have produced illegal propaganda by the GAO.

Nothing wrong, unless you consider psyops against the American public something wrong. Elizabeth de la Vega has written an excellent and concise book - U.S. v Bush et al - that argues compellingly that the Bush administration was guilty of criminal conspiracy to fraud leading into the Iraq invasion.

This latest revelation (or confirmation, rather) just adds to what already should be an extremely strong case for impeachment.

The folks at the Center for Media and Democracy - who truly do greatly underappreciated work in tracking the subversion of democracy by p.r. - have written a post at their blog explaining why this activity was most likely (or is) illegal.

http://www.prwatch.org/node/7261

The Pentagon military analyst program unveiled in last week's exposé by David Barstow in the New York Times was not just unethical but illegal. It violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those restrictions, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."

As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, "publicity or propaganda" is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) "covert propaganda." By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.

There is much more at the link, including where the author reminds us that the Bush administration has already been found to have produced illegal propaganda by the GAO.

Jim Lippard of the Lippad Blog attended a talk of Healy's

http://lippard.blogspot.com/2008/05/gene-healy-on-cult-of-presidency.html

He notes that Hillary Clinton has stated she is prepared to be Command in Chief of he economy. I know that's unrelated to this post but I just thought it significnt.

Re: McCain and the judiciary.

He's hitting the neoconservative dog whistle pretty hard.

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/06/saving-democracy-from-independent.html

In my view, the neoconservative enthusiasm for radical democracy has two sources. First, it is rooted in the hope and the gamble that the people are likely to be more conservative than their "parchment regime"—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. And if the last two presidential elections are any indication, this may well be true. Second, neoconservatives are hostile to America’s liberal traditions. They are smart enough to recognize that there is a gulf between democracy and liberty, and that the former can be used to defeat the latter. They are clever enough to grasp the self-refuting nature of democracy.

Conservatives understand that people are vulnerable to manipulation and can easily be made to turn against their own liberties. If the people can be convinced that liberty leads to licentiousness, children out of wedlock, drug addiction, prostitution, and rampant crime, and if they can be convinced that liberty also undermines national security, they will gladly rid themselves of liberty. In short, the neoconservative enthusiasm for democracy has its source in the very real possibility that democracy can be the most powerful instrument in the destruction of the liberal regime.

--Shadia Drury