I agree there should be more tapings, but I would prefer to see a situation where the interogee has a say in the matter -- especially when the confession is going to incriminate another party. In cities where gangs are a big problem it's hard enough to get people to testify, much less confess. (The eliciting of a confession is the lazy lawman's technique, anyway; information gathered in an interrogation should ideally lead to other, hard evidence that is then used in court.) If the interogee has a constitutional right to silence and/or a lawyer, then shouldn't s/he also have the option of not being recorded?

My grandpappy used to tell a story about an old tomcat that liked to torment this shopkeeper's ferocious dog by sitting, licking his paws nonchalantly, just six inches outside the reach of the dog's chain. The dog wasn't too smart; every damn time he saw that cat he'd come barreling down the alley and get jerked off his feet at the very last second. That didn't seem fair, so one day Grandpa snuck in there and added a foot's worth of chain. A little later that day, there was one very surprised cat.

The new balance in congress is like that extra foot of chain. I don't have to tell you who the cat is.

How Joe Leiberman feels about this? Does he love Bush enough to play spoiler here?

Check out Glenn Greenwald, if you haven't already.

Jim Montague's Scalia quote gives me the shivers. If Scalia feels EP is justified whenever the president thinks it's justified, then so do Alito and Thomas and maybe even Roberts. That might just be the Chimp's ace in the hole, right there.

He didn't ask the rest of his question.

"Do we have that many potential terrorists running around the country? If so, I'm really worried. And if there are, why has no one been arrested and put on trial for terrorism after all this illegal surveillance??"

Pandora Republicans. They opened the box, now they're trying to stuff all the shit that flew out, back in.

"If I were God..."

At least not willingly, isn't necessarily because they have something to hide. I can imagine a circumstance where Rove, Meiers, et al. get up there and testify that it was what it was: there was a reasonable political component and the laws in place at the time permitted it and it was badly explained because of confusions internal to the DOJ. Not saying that flies with me, but they probably could pull it off -- unless there are other bodies buried nearby that we don't even know about yet. I do think this is at least as much about hubris and sandbox "You can't tell us what to do" attitude by the administration as it's about any prosecutable wrongdoing.

As quoted somewhere else around here, Scalia has already opined in public that executive privilege is pretty much whatever the president says it is.

"Given the right circumstances."

We often forget how our orderly democracy rests on economic overabundance and the entitled expectation that every morning we will arise in a peaceful habitat. Sure, there are stormy seas, like firings of attorneys general and even that distant war that kills someone else's kids. But let things take a turn for the bleaker, and look out. The worms come out of the wood very quickly and are exalted very quickly to positions of power. Which is why wormicide must be applied in good times.

If they didn't quote his words from 1998, when he scoffed at the notion of Clinton's aides NOT testifying under oath in public as the natural order of things in a democracy, if they didn't then the Wash. press corps have notched themselves a new low in butt-licking cowardice.

Snow was saying that testimony under oath in public WAS the natural order of things in a democracy, of course. Now, it's an intrusion.

Well said! Lamotte's "I-me-I-me" writing belongs with that of Paglia in the pages of Redbook, not here at Salon.

Salon should get rid of the option to post anonymously. Sure, you can still make up a name, but there's something insulting about people who want to leave their footprints all over the place without even the courage to use a handle.

Screw the (anonymously pointed out) spelling mistakes, great article! Thank you.

"The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government's racketeering case.

"Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers."

From the WaPo, if true it could mean the lid is coming off in the AG scandal:

"The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government's racketeering case.

"Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers."

Hoping, as I'm sure you are, that others (and there have to have been others) will now come forward. Wondering why this isn't already topping the news. So much going on, I guess...

It was a well-written, thoughtful review. I needed it, even if you didn't.