...would be much thinner than W's. Is this because he has only been in office for nine months, or because he is different? Probably some of each.

So let's be practical. The only benefit I can see of Obama winning the NPP is that we can use it to try to hold him to higher standards in the future. And that will be a long climb up the mountain. But it is worth the effort, right Adnoto?

Then there are no Israelis either.

We aren't scared of the Other we are scared of Technology.

I think that we, as a country, are more scared of the other than of the technology.

that Iran "has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device" is also, I guess, not evidence of anything.

Correct. This information is not that hard to obtain or understand.

"Doesn't that rather obviously raise serious doubts about how "clear" it is that the facility could only be designed for military purposes?" No, that's only one possibility.

"doubts" leaves room for other possibilities. I will let Scuzzaman figure out the Latin phrase describing this particular logical fallacy.

How nice that they're inventing their own religion and their own deity.

Indeed, just as all religions were invented.

All the proof you need that Iran is up to no good is their terse letter to the IAEA. If they had nothing to hide, then why didn't they write a friendly letter?

If they have something to hide, then why did they not write a friendly letter?

I think they do have something to hide. All countries have something to hide. Do friendly letters help keep it hidden, or help expose it? Probably neither.

I agree that the construction of the site generated enough unusual activity in that area so that it was inevitable that it would be discovered by satellite almost immediately. The interesting story is the reaction within our intelligence system and the administration. Who knew? How was that information used? These are missing central facts, but ones we do not, and probably cannot know.

...but doubly so in reverse, when the liberation of Poland led to the liberation of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, et al, all the way up to the collapse of the Soviet Union...

I think you are confusing a temporal sequence with cause and effect.

Based on what theory of constitutional law?

No theory, just the practice. Justice is not served by political interference from above. International relations is all politics.

I think the president could take a much more active role at State than Justice. He can pretty much be involved as much as he wants in State through the SoS. Not so with Justice.

The DOJ is NOT a fourth branch of government.

We all know that. But it does not mean that the AJ reports to the president's chief of staff each day to get a list of cases to prosecute. At least he shouldn't.

He understands that civilian casualties will lose the war, he wants more troops for the safety of all, to slowly regain territory, control and preserve peace and win hearts and minds - which he believes is still possible if civilian casualties cease.

Anyone who tells you he can fight a civil war in A-stan without killing civilians is lying.

Just remember the surge in Iraq; it won the war, which explains why we are still there.

All those video game "airmen" out there in the mid west need practice piloting drones and dropping bombs under real conditions. We need an army there to help create the targets and justify more sales.

Right. An agreement between Italy and the Vatican creates an independent state. By these means, any country could create hundreds of internal but "independent" countries.

Let's see now, something that is not an independent state signs a treaty, something independent states do, that makes it an independent state. Presumably this is retroactive, therefore giving it the right to have made the agreement in the first place?

...or Roosevelt upon getting the Enigma machine, or Kennedy listening in on Khrushchev speaking with Castro...

Did FISA ever have any legal impact on the interception of foreign to foreign communications? I think not.

The legal implications of civil wars are too complicated for me.

I think the issues in the FISA remake were foreign to US citizen in the US and foreign to foreign passing through the US, but I will leave the details to someone who better remembers.

Thank you, but I have to admit I had not actually visualized the goal post moving until Bystander pointed it out.

Nor have I read Heart of Darkness in many years, but that is the passage of Conrad that I most remember. An interesting comparison, the horrors of colonial exploitation by one who was too talented to be doing it, to the exploitation, by those who certainly know better, of "news" in the service of forces that destroy our country from within.

And let's not forget that character of the same last name from the 1979 movie, where the horror was analogous, but from a different time and on a different continent.

Yes, balanced approach to terror, balanced reporting; it is all so confusing. How can one remember which is which?

That is not uping fear. It was a a balanced approach.

I did not misquote you, or take what you wrote out of context:

I've never even heard the Obama administration mentioning the recent terrorists case, or creating any fear around it either.

You wrote "even" to modify "heard" referring to "mentioning". Then you added "or creating any fear".

Proof of probable cause, perhaps?

Surely you cannot believe that Glenn "forgot" the constitutional requirement. You usually do better than this!

I've never even heard the Obama administration mentioning the recent terrorists case....

Apparently you did not look at the headline of the WaPo story Glenn discusses today:

Obama Team Says Zazi Case Illustrates Balanced Approach to Terror Threat