Good stuff in the ad, especially the Nixonian parallels (though Tricky Dick is looking pretty tame in retrospect).

But I can't shake the worry that attacking the Beltway elite by handing several thousand dollars to their house organ (in the form of ad revenue to the WaPo) is going to be big picture counterproductive. The objects of our scorn may or may not read the ad, but Fred Hiatt benefits regardless.

I recognize the difficulty of reaching/embarrassing the miscreants without going through and paying their own media. I just think it is a difficult and empirical question as to whether the net is to our benefit.

By working to elect Democrats everywhere and to elect as many as possible instead of just calculating to win enough to get you a majority through areas you think are "winnable" you eventually get to a point where you have a supermajority and more. Once you have enough Democrats that you don't have to worry about your narrow advantage you can start to work on making the party more liberal again by engaging in serious primary battles without worrying about giving Congress back to the Republicans.

It will be much easier to get rid of the appeasers once these conditions are true.

It isn't a bad strategy. It might be the only strategy. But I now fear it will not work, and here is why.

First, the Dem majority will indeed increase, which will mean the public will see the Dems as owning the government and its problems. Then, like the pre-1994 Dems and the post-2002 Republicans, the very impure Blue Dogs you and I want to purge will be caught in corruption, scandal, etc., and bloody the Dem brand. Then the voters will try to swing the pendulum back, thereby granting even more power to the Republicans and the principle-free middle that David Broder so dearly loves.

I hope I'm wrong.

A president with a 25% approval rating who is in charge of one of the most unpopular wars in American history has the power to bully an entire body of elected officials whose constituents put them into power to stand up to him in the first place and to protect the Constitution.

Alone, the capitulation under these circumstances simply makes no sense to me. So what is the simplest explanation for the data?

Blackmail.

With all we know about Rove's MO, can anyone put it past the WH to to have tapped Pelosi, Reid and other Dem leaders FIRST? Having watched Pelosi ram the FISA bill through the House, can you find another explanation for the heart-pounding fear that showed on her face as she spoke in favor of the bill?

Ask J. Edgar Hoover. Popularity isn't power. Knowing other people's secrets is.

The apparent contradiction: most of the very same people now so anxious to excuse torture and wireless wiretaps were foaming with outrage over Bill Clinton's perjury (because it wasn't, of course, the blowjob itself, but the crime -- the crime!-- of lying under oath about it).

The resolution: In The Republic, Plato has Sophist/whipping boy Thrasymachus claim that justice is "the will of the stronger." Plato lets Socrates win the argument with a nobler definition, but for our times, Thrasymachus was right. Principle is on our side, but principle is not the will of the stronger. The will of the stronger claims principle when useful, and jettisons it when not. The will to power is the only constant.

Glenn, you write of our dismal present in relation to recent history:

The difference (a critical one) is that what had been acts of lawbreaking and violations of our national values have become the norm -- consistent with, rather than violative of, our express values and policies.

Sadly, I think this is slightly off, unless by "national values" you mean the Platonic ideals of the Founders.

National values change. The real tragedy here is that what just happened with FISA is rather convincing evidence not of a violation of our values but of the new values actually in play. And the new values were mouthed by Thrasymachus 2400 years ago: "injustice, if it is on a large enough scale, is stronger, freer, and more masterly than justice".

It is all of a piece.

We have no accountability on Capital Hill because the Democratic gatekeepers are all accomplices (at best) to the crimes we seek to uncover. We have no accountability in the press because all of the key MSM real estate continues to be occupied by blood-soaked cretins like Friedman.

The conversation is limited to the bold and bloodthirsty on the one hand, and the cowardly and complicit on the other. It is in the interest of neither to give voice to our positions and our questions.

And the reason this ruling could not be applied to Glenn (and/or any of us) is?

Prosecuting government officials risks a "cycle" of criminalizing public service, [Sunstein] argued...

Ah, but there is already a cycle, and you can make book that it will be repeated.

Reagan/Bush I: Iran Contra; pardons with the full support of the punditocracy.

Clinton: Whitewater, Travelgate, Monicagate; endless investigation followed by impeachment with the full support of the punditocracy.

Bush II: complete roto-tilling of the Constitution (by a cast including many from Iran Contra), human rights, rule of law, etc.; no investigations, (to be) followed by pardons with the full support of the punditocracy.

And, if Obama takes office, just watch how fast all the usual suspects rediscover their outrage.

Q.E.D.

There is already a cycle. What they would all be at risk of demonstrating is logical consistency, but I see no chance of that.