Great, important catch, Glenn. What an appallingly brazen performance by Mukasey.

The immediate, urgent response from Congress to this flagrant abuse of the public trust and the power of his office by Senate-confirmed federal officer Attorney General Michael Mukasey? S.I.L.E.N.C.E.

Honestly, wouldn't it at least be more intellectually honest for these "legislators" to turn off the lights, board up the windows of Congress and go home? Our federal legislature has about as much meaning today with regard to the affairs of our nation, or impact on its course as does the Iraqi parliament to theirs.

The Constitution is as upside down in D.C. as are so many home mortgages - with the president singlehandedly deciding who this nation will wage war on, why and for how long, and whether and when to cease hostilities - in place of the people by way of their representatives in Congress. [Everyone waiting for a Democratic president to reverse our state of waging war and/or violence overseas is helping to feed right into that perverted line of thinking about the Constitution's war powers.] A declaration of war is the exclusive provenance of the Legislative Branch of government - according to our Founders - and it follows that so is the decision to cease (especially offensive, unprovoked) hostilities by way of a unilateral, simple majority vote in both Houses of Congress - with no authority vested in the Executive to veto such a decision. No legislator should in good conscience assume otherwise unless and until the Supreme Court rules to override the clear intent of Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution, following an affirmative vote by the Legislative Branch to cease hostilities in Iraq (with or without an attempt to repeal 2002's AUMF legislation).

The next PetraeusCrocker Show is on its way to Congress on April 8 & 9, and the latest bait and switch on Iraq is being honed by the Pentagon propagandists right now - in order to maintain the fictional, self-deluding premise that we are in Iraq to save the Iraqis from themselves. In the face, yet again, of simply despicable, tongue-tied S.I.L.E.N.C.E. from our Members of Congress.

Meanwhile, on FISA, the brutish leaders of the Executive Branch are obviously going to pull out every last trick in the Nazi propaganda playbook before they're done. The "Constitution" argument obviously hurt them last time round when wielded in the capable hands of Chris Dodd, so serial dissembler DNI Mike McConnell (literally) waved it around yesterday in his latest effort to deceive, while lamenting how he's tried to retire from the government only to be pulled back into "public" service repeatedly for his self-evidently invaluable, 'apolitical' skills in promoting the best interests of his defense industry colleagues and their authoritarian protectors in the White House:

"The Vietnam veteran, who said he's tried to retire three times, waved a copy of the Constitution and implored students to read it by day's end.

.

"This is a precious document. It is why we have survived. It is why we will survive. And it is why we will prevail in the future," he said. "What's the magic? The magic is how it starts: We the people. For the first time in history, government was about the people, not a leader." - DNI Mike McConnell, 3/28/08 in Lindsey Graham's South Carolina

No, Mr. McConnell - the Constitution is why we've survived the way we've survived, as a free and democratic society.

[Thanks for catching that McConnell appearance in SC and excerpting those quotes, tballou.]

Next up, tomorrow, on General Electric's Meet the Press hour: CIA Director Michael Hayden will be prepped to take his turn at disseminating disinformation and freshly-tuned falsehoods about FISA - in another, premeditated assault on the eroding shield that Congress constructed to preserve the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on secret, unchecked government-sponsored domestic security surveillance.