I would also point out that American elections are about picking the lessor of evils. That calculus is never easy, and some choose to vote for Nader for reasons they figured best for the country.

I am close to believing the libertarians who claim that voting itself (for anyone) is bad.

Alexander Cockburn (at The Nation and at Counterpunch.org) has for some time now argued that voting for incompetent Republicans is preferable to voting for Democrats (whom he labeled "more competent imperialists") simply because the disasters the Republicans visit on us will convince us to seek genuine change. I'm summarizing his argument (and maybe getting some of it wrong) but it's entertaining and thought provoking. I voted for Kerry in '04 and Obama in '08, but I seriously think he has a point.

I'm reserving judgement; that's what rational adults do. All I know is that 1) Obama is smarter than you; and 2) Obama has a deeper understanding of Constitutional Law

I love this! You call yourself a rational adult, then immediately fall into an appeal-to-authority fallacy!

FYI, one of the favorite devices used by authoritarians is to claim that those in authority understand the problem better than lil' ol' you. Don't fall for this. In a functioning democracy citizens should remain engaged and constantly question authority. It is not only their right, it is their duty.

"The department said the judge had no power to enforce such an order."

I sure hope that this is not devolving into a "you and what army?" argument. The judiciary's "power" exists only so long as all parties agree to abide by our constitution. If the court rules again as it has, and Obama does defy the order, then he will have crossed the Rubicon.

By the way, what happens if the court rules against Obama, he complies with their order, the suit goes ahead, and the plaintiffs win? Will we ever find out what went on? In other words, if the government loses and their program is declared illegal, can they be forced to declassify these documents? If I'm not mistaken the surveillance in question covers the time period after Ashcroft decertified the program but before the Congress legalized some form of it. I'd love to know what drove him near to resignation.

Are you the least bit mad at him. He burned one helluva lot of your tax dollars.

You're posting on Salon.com. Do you really need to ask that question? And it wasn't just 'W'. This has been brewing for 30 years or more, with significant assists from Saint Ronnie and Bill Clinton, and untouchable gurus like Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan (who is not calling for bank nationalization, the commie) and others.

You want to live in a cave and trade seashells? Banks provide a necessary service.

Please save the false dilemmas for others. Just because I or anyone else objects to the current model of mega-banks and reckless finance doesn't mean that we wish to live in caves. That's just not an honest stand to take in your argument. Banks do provide a very important service. But this service is usually pretty straightforward, without the need for all these creative financial tricks to make it seem like they are creating wealth out of thin air, or worse, which are used to hide risk from investors and clients. And a bank that is not as large as Citi could be allowed to fail when they act irresponsibly, punishing the bad actors, rather than requiring taxpayer bailouts that save the bad actors from ruin. Isn't that how the market is supposed to work?

BTW I'm also going to call you on another mistaken argument. It doesn't follow logically that because Citi's losses are larger than other banks then that means that they aren't charging enough credit card interest. The losses could have been caused by a number of other factors not related to the interest rates they charge their customers. Moreover the credit card industry as a whole are charging rates that would be considered usurious at any other time in our history.

You send in the FDIC, figure out who is solvent and who is insolvent, shut down the insolvent banks, and move on. Like yesterday. Then everyone knows that the survivors are OK and confidence can be restored. Drawing out this drama is not good for anyone except the investors of the insolvent banks. It seems to me that the needs of the few are overriding the needs of the many in this case.

And while we're talking about saving Citi, why? We have a problem here in large part because we have these parasitic entities that are "too big to fail." Break-em up! And re-regulate them so that they actually serve a useful purpose other than making a few people filthy rich.

The only reason the government isn't taking the obvious steps is that the likes of Citi and its investors are powerful, and the taxpayers are not.

It's like their new playbook is the script from Bulworth

Except they're leaving the telling-the-truth part out...