Using the power of their offices and gossamer-thin legal justifications, these attorneys made the administration’s many abuses possible by providing the administration’s law-breaking with the gloss of apparent legality.

Look I'm sure my boss could get a lawyer to write him an opinion which states it's legal for him to burn down our competitor's plant.

That really doesn't chenge my problem when he gives my a can of gas, some rags and a lighter and says, "go to it, my lad, there's a big promotion awaiting you for this"

Remember that old wheeze? Well, in the contracors and Armed Forces, it's "lawyers all the way down". Are you trying to say that every person (above the rank of pure grunt) didn't have legal advice and analysis available, and couldn't ask his counsel "That's great for Yoo, but what will happen to me if I go along with it?"

And all the lawyers said: "Hey, man it's all good."? I doubt it.

Please, let me hear from those who think that because the Republicans justified, initiated, and put into practice these things, they will be reluctant to prosecute Dems for them? Oh come on.

The biggest problem today is not whether the Republicans have done these things. They have. The biggest problem is deciding whether the Democrats will continue to do them

And if they do, for one day after they take office, they cut their own throats. That's way more immediate than how Yoo will eventually be prosecuted.

I'm gone. Many thanks to all who might have responded to me. I leave with celerity, leaving you with Celery. You get the better end of the deal!

Glenn, do you think that about three thousand people dies on 9-11 so we couldn't twist the story any way we wanted to?

I'd check my lapel, to see if maybe your flag pin fell off.

9-11 belongs to America, we can do with it whatever we want. The facts are irrelevant.

Next you will be doubting the Resurrection. Sheesh!

No man, and especially not Glenn Greenwald (if that is his real name?), can stand athwart the ramparts of literary history and yell "Stop"!

9-11 will be a seminal event for writers everywhere. Has the great 9-11 novel even been pitched, much less written, or rather dictated, yet? I think not.

And a sort of small-minded, hobgoblinny consistency and a devotion to facts (facts are stupid things) will not help this process come to fruition. The unction won't function, baby.

Besides, the 9-11 which happenedin your head is the important one, some would say, indeed, the only one.

I'm with you. I know what I saw. I'm convinced that additional kinetic and thermal energy way beyond that delivered by the blow from the planes and the fire, was used on those buildings.

Of that I will never be unconvinced. And almost every attempt to convince me different seems to be focusing on a different building than the World Trade Towers- the towers were curtain wall buildings with an inner column made up of many cross linked tremendous steel beams. You could take huge chunks out of 'em, but you can't make 'em fall down unless you cut those inner columns. Like a pine tree or fir tree with a single trunk.

But where that energy came from and who put it there and why and how, I have no idea, and couldn't even begin to guess.

And I don't want to. Sooner or later, it'll come out.

I'd really like for these not be debated in this thread.

Glad to comply, and I'm sorry I mentioned it at all.

Look lady, I was up in those World Trade Towers several times. They seemed fine to me.

there are those that are unable to stand extraordinary stresses, due to, generally, lack of redundancy

Thanks, coctailhag! It's nice to know I am in no danger of collapse. I'll say it over and over again, my friend.

Taxes, vaccinations

Nobody likes taxes, and those damn vaccinations hurt! I mean c'mon, a law that this guy gets to stick me with a pin? What the hell?

For complete, rapid and efficient emetisis (if that's the word...) see this little love-letter to the McCain family military tradition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/us/politics/06mccain.html?_r=1&ex=1365134400&en=34258e68e15249b3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

"McCain Is Vocal on War, but Silent on Son’s Service"

Well, silent til this article was splashed all over the Sunday New York Times.

... and he's headed back to Iraq. I am gonna be praying for Mr. McCain's son, and the rest of his unit, as hard as I can.

If that poor kid (he enlisted at 17) gets hurt or worse, McCain goes right to the Presidency, passes go, and collects $200,000 dollars, or whatever it is now.

An ad of a tearful McCain, holding his injured son's hand, and vowing to "get the folks who did this to us"? Pure gold.

Hmm... If I were that kid, I would watch my back. Anybody remember Pat Tilman?

Me, I can't even think about Mukasey yet. I'm still not over how nobody could "imagine" what kind of a guy he would be.

He is mean, intolerant, callous and just crass but he is dating my sister and she is now afraid to leave him.

That's what I call a very liberal interpretation of the word "relative". More than liberal, magnanimous!

When will this f*cking nonsense end?

That kid (the McCain issue) gets so much as a scratch in Iraq and it's Hello, President McCain. Just imagine the ad with McCain at his bedside! If I were him, I'd watch my back.

Thoughts anybody???

My thoughts are: Once we open that (9-11) up, all heck breaks loose in the Comments section. So let's keep 'em to ourselves.

It's a case where silence, if not quite golden, is rising rapidly against the dollar.