...at least one senator says that, given the attorney general's evasive answers in previous performances, there may not be much point in asking him to testify again.

Of course, that's exactly the result Mr. G's evasive answers were intended to create. No, they must stay after him.

They come off sounding like we're so shit-scared of Al-Qaeda we're no longer in a position to act rationally, to let go of the tiger's tail and confront it. All the while the Republican message tries to be one of ballsy, steely-eyed strength. What a joke.

Let that not be the end of the investigation. As tedious as it will be to have to listen to Repubs groans of, "When are you going to let this be over? Stop beating a dead horse," guess what? It isn't a dead horse until the cancer of incompetent Bushie loyalist subverters is excised from the DOJ.

ToddPW seems to be saying that people are "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore," about the current state of politics and the media's role in it. Would that this were so. And maybe it is. Maybe. I know I'm mad, a lot of people I know are mad, but a critical mass? That would be nice.

And as for Ron Paul, he was spot on when describing how American foreign policy begat 9/11. Slate quotes Bin Laden himself, in one of his declarations of war against American (1996): "More than 600,000 Iraqi children have died due to lack of food and medicine and as a result of the unjustifiable aggression (sanctions) imposed on Iraq and its people. The children of Iraq are our children. You, the USA, together with the Saudi regime, are responsible for the shedding of the blood of these innocent children. Due to all of that, whatever treaty you have with our country is now null and void."

Read the whole thing here: http://www.meij.or.jp/new/Osama%20bin%20Laden/jihad1.htm

This should make all politicians uncomfortable, Bill Clinton and George Bush alike. We knew these guys were dangerous and that they meant business; it's a truth that hurts. Small wonder that Ron Paul will be marginalized for speaking it.

And it starts with "Can we please stop talking about a vote five years ago that was made under very different circumstances and made by a whole hell of a lot of people who would have voted differently if they hadn't been lied to? Please? Can we talk about what's going on today? Please?"

Okay, so commercial and political interests know where I shop, what I buy, what I read, etc., etc. Is that so awful or so different from the way people have lived in the past? The kind of "privacy" we've enjoyed in the last hundred years or so, since people started moving off the farm in earnest and making cities so big that anonymity and disentanglement from one's roots became routine, is not the historical norm. At a new level and in quite different ways, we've returned to the village, where everyone knows everyone else's business. In days of yore, that common knowledge was used for social control, and frankly I'd prefer my information to be used by someone who wants to sell me toothpaste or register me to vote than by forces that want to ensure my behavior fits inside the bounds of narrow community or religious standards. So, I'm not worried that my Ralphs card is costing me my privacy, but eavesdropping by the government still scares the crud out of me.

I shouldn't have called it a return to the village. It is definitely a new kind of village with different benefits and different -- often terrifying -- dangers. I only wanted to point out that our much-treasured "privacy" is something rather new under the sun.

Tsk, tsk. Modern privacy isn't an outgrowth of the Enlightenment; blamne that one on the Industrial Revolution. Reason and science, taken to their extremes by the wrong people, can create as nasty a hell as any Torquemada.

Does congress have the power to undo the appointments of USAs like Tim Griffin and Rachel Paulose?

A phrase right out of the GOPAC/Gingrich/Languagmatters playbook.

The article is no longer front page item on their web edition. You have to poke around a little to find it in the opinion section. Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're having well-warranted second thoughts about that piece, thanks to Glenn.

As an aside, your motorcycle cop analogy falls flat as soon as the cop gets off his bike and starts peering into people's windows.

Not sure it does. As I said, technology brings new challenges. Your freedom to swing your fist ends at my chin, and that used to be enough. And as new ways to swing one's fist have been created, we have invented new ways to protect one's chin, mostly in the form of laws but also technology (cop radar?). Also, I was talking about an impersonal "peek into my windows," until certain "reasonable cause" conditions were met, not the obvious and heavy-handed example of a cop looking in my window just because he feels like it. You're mixing apples with oranges, sir. And we're not adversaries, here. I find all this terribly fraught with dangers and find no basis whatsoever for letting BushCo off the hook for their warrantless piracy. I'm just pointing out...we may have to do some listening in order to protect ourselves, so let's talk about how best to do it with the least amount of infringement, as we did when we created motorcycle policemen and the laws that restrain them in the line of duty. (BTW, didn't mean to publish anon. last time, not that it matters -- somehow the box got checked)