One thing the vast majority of Americans don't understand is that we have no real Civil Service (in the old Chinese, French, British, and German sense) here in our country. Virtually every position of authority (with the partial exception of the Federal Reserve) in the Federal Government is a Presidential appointee. The last time I heard the figure the president appoint something over 2000 people to post in the Federal Government. The "Washington Bureacrats" that people (especially out West) think are running around making decisions don't hardly exist. Decisions are made overwhelmingly by Presidential appointees, or by lobbyists who write much of Congress's legislation for it.

Obama represents the norm of insider Washington thinking when he asks, rhetorically to his flunkies: "Who is this guy making trouble for us, and why can't Geithner shut him up?" When his minions tell him that the guy has a position outside the chain of command that eventually leads up to Obama, this must have pissed off our Glorious Leader and led to the actions Glenn describes. It's all pathetic and disheartening, but in tune with the way we have let government of the people become government of the president (and the interests that put him in the Oval Office and support him).

Jesus, they'll all cry through "Schindler's List" and scream "never again!" but they haven't got a clue about what "Judgment at Nuremberg" was all about. They don't seem to get that the vast majority of crimes committed under the Third Reich were perfectly legal and established government policy. Hell, the Germans were quite thorough in stirpping the Jews and other undesirable types of thier citizenship and leaving them in a legal limbo so THEY HAD NO RIGHTS under German law. Thus, anything you did to them was supposedly fair play. Too many Americans believe exactly the same thing about terrorist suspects, that since they aren't American citizens, they have no rights and therefore can be kidnapped, arrested, imprisoned, and tortured (even killed by death squads) with impunity.

We said, when World War II was over, that "carrying out the lawful orders of my superiors" was no defense. Now, suddenly, it is. Tragic and farcical all at the same time.

And I'd go to the wall, I hope, to support it. But after 40 years of right wing efforts to mobilize the best and the brightest lawyers to make mincemeat of language that should be clear as a bell, and 40 years of left wing intellectuals denouncing the "tyrrany" of reason and the ultimate subjectivity of just about everything, it is hard to find firm ground upon which to make a stand. You've got Bill Clinton parsing the meaning of, what was it, "the", and George W. and his gang saying that it's torture if and only if we SAY it's torture, or somebody else who we don't like does it, or if some bastards do it to our troops, where do you then begin to take a stand?

This battle was probably lost in a hundred subtle shifts in attitude and perception going back decades. Waling the populace back will be tough enough. Walking the Power Elite back when this kind of thinking is so beneficial to them seems an impossibility.

How come you 2nd Amendment folks always quote the second part of the amendment but conveniently leave out the first? You wanna talk Dick Cheney, you better be straight with people.

The Second Amendment is ambiguous in its very poor wording. It mentions regulation BEFORE it mentions the right to bear arms. And it places it all in the context of the militia, an institution that no longer exists in its 18th century form.

If you want to join the National Guard, you can by all means bear arms. otherwise, it's up to the politrical process and courts to determine what "well regulated" means.

Mr. Greenwald, I think it's worse than that. I think that they know that a plurality, perhaps a majority, of Americans no longer think its a issue. They simply assume that the rich and the powerful use the media to manipulate them and rule the place. In fact, that's one of the perqs of being rich and powerful--and Americans don't want to banish those perqs, they want to one day enjoy them.

We've got, by global and historical standards, a large ruling class or power elite or whatever you want to call them. I'd guess that you've got upwards of a million businessmen, investors, politicians, military officials, economists, media types, and (almost exclusively Protestant) religious leaders (plus their families and retainers) who really count for something in this country. That leaves, of course, over 290 million people with only the power to endorse the choices the elite provide for us. But it's still alot of people, with influence spread across the fifty states. The nexus may be Washington, but the strength of the American Power Elite is their ubiquity. They share a broad but very narrow consensus about how the world works, why they should run it, and what problems will by solved by what means. Their attitudes have been accepted and normalized by millions who are not, and never will be, members of the club. How we deal with this is, at present, beyond me.

Buddy,

GE and its officials can write their Congressman, Senators, or the President. They can call their offices.

Nobody would say they can't.

What is off limits, or should be, is throwing millions around to get their way. They CANNOT USE BRIBES OR THREATS to get what they want at the expense of the citizenry and the taxpayers.

Otherwise, you are trading in democracy for oligarchy.

Got it?

And I'm glad to see that you think that maximizing profits is the one, sole, and only value in society, or that an individual should entertain. As if lying, or muzzeling those who would speak the truth, to make money was a good thing. Big of you, that.