...to continue seeing ever more hard evidence of the duplicity, manipulation, incompetence and general unworthiness of the crowd that controls our government -- and to realize that it apparently doesn't matter enough to a majority of people to DO anything about it!

I guess it could be for a variety of reasons -- maybe they don't care and still support Bush & Co., or they don't think there's anything that CAN be done. Either way, it's almost terminally depressing to know that all the evidence in the world can be presented, and we're just like the proverbial frogs sitting in SLOWLY HEATING water on a stove, calmly seeing life as we know it snuffed out.

If you pair up Suskind's two recent books on Bush with the Frontline report this week on Cheney and the Dark Side (by the way, HOW APPROPRIATE to make that Star Wars allusion!), there seems to be plenty of reasons for patriotic Americans to rise up and storm the White House like the French did the Bastille. Perhaps it's not necessary to warm up the guillotines -- not yet, anyway -- but a little Revolution might be good for the American soul right now...

Perhaps the most inexcusable result of the way Bush & Co. have handled 9/11, the real threat of terrorism and the war in Iraq is this: We've been played like violins for so long, with unnecessary color-coded alerts and overblown claims of involved terror plots, both foreign and domestic, that the public will stop listening. It has probably ALREADY stopped listening.

There is no doubt that the use of heightened terror alerts has been tied to political needs of the administration. Just as with the boy who cried wolf, WHO is to blame when we pay no heed to announcement of a REAL threat? If a tornado siren goes off repeatedly when the sky is blue, as well as when it's raining, pretty soon a rational choice is made -- you IGNORE the faulty siren. Whose fault, then, is it? I'd say it's obvious -- whoever is pushing the button to trigger the misleading siren!

We all eagerly await the actual text of this ruling, and it is refreshing -- even unexpected -- to see a majority of the Supremes affirm the obvious: We ARE a nation of laws, and the President must abide by them, just like all the rest of us -- but don't miss the HUGE hole in this ruling.

As the War Room item put it, "...the Bush administration may hold detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan 'for the duration of active hostilities...' "

We've all seen how the Bush administration has broadly defined the so-called "war against global terrorism" -- they are correct, of course, in saying this is no traditional war, so defining its beginning and ending points is obviously subjective. No one will sign a peace treaty with al Qaeda, so it's certainly not beyond the realm of possibility to say this war will HAVE no end.

"Active hostilities" will exist as long as this administration wants to hold a single prisoner without trial. There can be NO doubt about that fact. Many of these Guantanamo prisoners will continue to be held in legal limbo, with no right to be charged and tried in court, and therefore no hope for resolution of their situation.

This country is currently afflicted with a disease more virulent than Bird Flu, which has long loomed as the killer of millions. I'm talking, of course, of Chickenhawk Flu.

Its first symptoms appear as an utter contempt for basic American values of dissent, human rights, the rule of law and the balance of powers (including Congressional oversight and judicial review). The brain fails to process information received from the ears and eyes properly, and reflexive knee-jerk reactions start to overcome conscious thought and action.

As infected brains continue shutting down, Chickenhawk Flu zombies spread out, attacking anyone not already afflicted, attempting to smother and silence them.

As its final stages approach, the eyes alternately glaze over, then light up with wild fear, leading to non-stop statements of, "Oh, I'm SO afraid, YOU DO WHATEVER NEEDS TO BE DONE, Mr. President -- I trust you to save me from EVERYTHING out there in the dark!"

At that point, an overwhelming and tragic sound rumbles across the world -- the sound of millions of Americans rolling over, giving up -- and allowing all that makes this country special to DIE.

The razor-thin Supreme Court majority of five may be the only inoculation we have preventing an epidemic of Chickenhawk Flu across this country -- pray that our resistance (and the health of those five justices!) lasts until 2009, when the White House is fumigated and occupied by someone new.

Denials from these telecommunications firms have always focused almost exclusively on the existence of contracts, rather than the issue of whether customer records actually WERE turned over to the NSA, with or without a "contract". It all depends, I suppose, on the definition of "contract" -- many arrangements can be made that don't involve formal contracts. A whole new wrinkle to "Don't ask, don't tell" creeps insistently into the back of the mind.

Those denials were always carefully worded in ways that avoided addressing whether these companies knew that the NSA actually had customer records, regardless of how they were obtained. How hard is it for our media to pose several simple questions to AT&T, BellSouth, Verizon and Qwest?

"Do you know if the NSA, or any other such government agency, has customer records from your company? If the answer is yes, do you know how they obtained them? If this answer is also yes, can you disclose how and when this occurred?"