to release these documents. One can only hope that it's to soften the ground for further actions yet to come. Which, if so, makes their actions wrt these ongoing civil suits quite perplexing and inexplicable. It's like they suffer from the political equivalent of multiple personality syndrome.

Multiple Policy Syndrome?

And I continue to be amazed that some people keep plugging the "I trust him, give him time, he knows what he's doing" Obamabot Kool Aid mantra. I truly do loath (or pity) these people at this point because they are functionally literally indistinguishable from Bushies in their knee-jerk loyalty to a leader and utterly unwilling and/or unable to allow the slightest criticism of them for any reason no matter how reality-based. It really verges on some form of mental illness, or at least an advanced state of adult infantilism of the sort that many in our society suffer from.

I had a truly bizarre and pointless exchange with one such bot (or, I'm increasingly coming to suspect, a troll) on Daily Kos last night who kept saying that because we don't know the details of the secret evidence being witheld in these cases, we weren't in a position to judge the merits of the Obama DoJ's case here, despite my telling this person repeatedly that the specifics of this evidence were utterly immaterial to the specific complaints being made against the DoJ. Even though they never came out and said it, this person appeared to believe that under certain circumstances, a president can withold evidence from a court and no one can criticize him for it or make him do otherwise, the lack of any constitutional basis for this be damned.

I can only hope that this person was in fact a troll (i.e. deliberately toying with me for fun) and not representative of more than a tiny handful of unhinged and moronic Obamabots. But I suspect, that in only slightly less extreme form, such people are fairly numerous, the result of their being politically ignorant, mentally lazy, and quite desperate to believe in someone who'll lead them out of the present wilderness. One should expect such mindless cultism on the right, which thrives on the stupidity and desperation of unsophisticated people (which the vast majority of today's remaining Repubs clearly are). But it exists on the left as well, to what long-term effect, no one can know, other than to make it easier for Obama to get away with certain things.

Which, obviously, is where we come in.

No, and what does it matter?

No, to insist on adherence to the constitution in a "post-9/11 era" (whatever that means, and I was in NYC when it happened) is not nuts, and I literally have no idea why it would be, because in terms of what people who casually throw out such meaningless terms as "post-9/11 era" tend to mean by it, i.e. we're under attack by people who want to and perhaps even can destroy us or cause us massive damage, well, when has that ever not been plausibly the case since, oh, 1945 (which not ironically is when the modern national security state was born)?

Does this mean that the constitution has been effectively suspended since then, and anyone who questions this is therefore "nuts"? If so, at what point will it no longer be "nuts"? When do valid reasons for suspending the constitution cease to exist? How does one tell? What are the signs and preconditions? Do magical white ponies ridden by dancing elves singing Joy to the World! herald such a time? Nutty minds do want to know.

And since when does public opinion have anything to do with what is and isn't constitutional? Are we to guage the constitutionality (or at least sanity) of a given policy by what a 24-watching public thinks, and just do away with the judiciary (or, perhaps, putting it in charge of the Nielson company)? And in any case, not that it matters, but all polls that I've seen indicate that the public is against violations of the constitution.

So on literally every count, your "argument" fails, epically.

I'd like to know what makes me one, as opposed to someone's being ok with the executive branch unilaterally deciding what is and isn't legitimate evidence in discovery regardless of of what the courts--the sole constitutional arbitor of such things--determines that to be. It's now considered to be "nutty" to believe that the constitution should be respected and observed? Is this one of those "Only crazy people believe that the constitution should always be followed" arguments indulged in by neocons, YAFers and assorted other fairweather democrats?

Is this one of those "I trust him to do the right thing because he has a magic pony" things?

Or are we just being trolled? I tend to ignore those on principle.