The crime the Chinese are committing here, which clearly gives Brownback the vapors, is actually informing the victim of the crime in advance.

IANAL, but it seems likely that warrantless blanket surveillance in China is perfectly legal. Just sayin'.

Help me out here. What's the legal/constitutional basis upon which Rockefeller, Harman, Hoyer, and Pelosi can be prosecuted for not disclosing classified White House crimes? I understand that they should be in jeopardy, but the mechanism is not obvious to me. Thanks.

Haven't read all the comments, but there's one thing I don't hear much talk about in general: Is there a country that has proven it can defend itself better than Israel? They have the best air force in the world, they have nukes, the states opposed to them can't fight & have been defeated several times in the field. Why is the idea that Israel needs to be defended by the US even a talking point? It's just weird. A long, sustained shooting war with the Palestinians might weaken them significantly, might even undo them, but that's a long way off, and the US can't do anything about that anyway -- civil conflicts tend to resist external influence.

Also, the idea of "divided loyalty" is kind of disgusting. Sheesh. Anyone who would prefer to see country A make gains at the expense of country B should probably be living in the former. And it's an issue largely because of the US's outsized influence in the world, which, IMHO, is currently detrimental and unsustainable.

If it wasn't completely clear before, it is clear now. Four errors in six columns, now an error in the correction. Kristol is essentially a bot, a frontman, NYT's engine for pushing right wing talking points.

They can say it's to provide diversity, or whatever, and say it's nothing to do with them because it's on the op-ed page. So it allows them to get their wingnut views across without accepting responsibility for them, thereby -- what? maintaining their subscription base on the Upper West Side?

I don't know why they don't just run right explicitly. Perhaps it is in the nature of the wingnut to be sneaky.

It remains to be seen if [Kxxxxxl] Clark Hoyt will correct [xxx] Kristol's latest false statement.

Fixed.

Parker has a point. We've never elected an immigrant's child to the presidency (excluding the early presidents, some of whose parents came from Great Britain). The number of non-British presidential surnames is seven -- two Irish, three Dutch, two German. I believe there is more German blood in the U.S. than blood of any other nation, yet we've only had two German-named presidents. We've never had an Italian, Slavic, or Jewish president.

A lot of people will say things like they're uncomfortable with Obama because he's not a full-blooded American, and they'll say it because they know better than to say 'black'. But in fact I'll wager those people are going to vote for the British-American, as most of us always have (although I never have).

I reject Parker's explanation for the phenomenon, as it's almost certainly well more complicated than she sets it out to be.

So long as stories with bloggish origins -- such as the US Attorney scandal or this one -- increasingly bubble up into Congress, the fact that Fred Hiatt is a tool & Pinch Sulzberger is a traitor is decreasingly important.

Perhaps Pinch's boy ("Paunch"?) will turn his hand to novels or erotica.

It is quite excellent how quickly this issue made its way from the blogs to the msm to the Congress & the DOJ. Fine fine work, Glenn et al.

Also, seriously, let us all make a personal pledge to avoid the term "Homeland". And the next Democratic president should make a big show of deprecating it. Everytime I hear it, I feel like I should take a shower.

@Duckman-- Thanks for making the point I was going to make, more eloquently than I would have.

As far as this whole chickenhawk thing goes: Chickenhawkery seems to be the coin of the realm nowadays. It is really not as it used to be. Is it because the populace is chicken, i.e., the average American wouldn't wish to fight in one of these foreign wars & would do whatever it took to get out of it, & when they encounter a similar politician, he relates to him? If so, it would be analogous to the current President's role as avatar of the larger society's anti-intellectualism.

Rep. Jim Moran: The Democrats were afraid that if there had been a terrorist strike in August, they would have been vulnerable to criticism from the White House that it had been due to the NSA's inability to wiretap communications.

There needs to be a discussion about the next terrorist attack, both within the Democratic leadership and in the media. It doesn't matter who is in charge: it's very difficult to thwart a determined suicide attack. I believe that this phase of Qutb/bin Laden jihadism will burn out like all radical movements, but the chance of another attack is not negligible, and the Democrats need to be ready for it. Am I crazy? I haven't heard anyone talk about this.

Terrorist attacks (obviously) do not existentially threaten the U.S., or even U.S. prominence. The Caliphate is not going to take over Europe or the U.S. But the Republicans have built up this mass fear and the media go along with it. Bowling for Columbine was, I thought, a fine exploration of the role of fear in American society. How we overcome this is not clear to me at all.