although I doubt very seriously that Dick Cheney is in favor of a unitary executive as a matter of principle. He's in favor of a Republican unitary executive as a matter of principle.

You've got that right, Digby. Okay, so it was just a group of energy industry honchos, then, eh? Hmph. Then I guess Dick was trying out the whole executive privilege arguments, like testing his wings for the big game to be played later, trying to establish a precedent for the unitary executive manner of operating, then?

Then again, with the whole private/shadow government manner of operating these guys use, who knows what they discuss with whom and where, given how secretive they are even with ostensibly public events.

The infrastructure issue is one that particularly bugs me. Anymore, I really believe the whole GOP enterprise was a con game from the get-go, without ever intending to deliver anything by way of the private industry (the so-called magic of the marketplace -- poof, watch those public dollars disappear!), so much as it was to privatize as much as they could get away with, and figure if they axed enough taxes on those at top, they'd end up with a powerful enough lobby of people who'd fight to keep those tax cuts, or perhaps would threaten capital flight if they found their tax rates going up. Class war, Banana Republican-style!

The important goals for the reactionaries were to dismantle the public sphere, get at that money by way of tax cuts, and count on it never being rebuilt again (and fighting it if anybody tried to, the whole austerity at home thing, while they ship out billions abroad). I really think they don't care about actual governance, administration, or problem-solving -- certainly not about infrastructure (unless we're talking building golf courses on public land or something). All the talk of the efficiencies of private industry is just lip service to get gullible, greedy, or cynical people to support it. I keep looking at the airline industry and wondering when the benefits of deregulation will ever be realized. Hah!

No system is perfect, but at least with public money, the public has a say in it; once something's privatized, they're accountable to who, exactly? Their shareholders, and nobody else. That's a diminishment of democracy, not an enhancement of it. The GOP political paradox of less freedom equals more choice.

At some point, sensible Americans are going to have to take a step back (hopefully NOT into a sinkhole) and decide that becoming a banana republic is bananas, no matter what the Banana Republicans say.

I'm glad you're calling them out on the NIE nonsense, Mr. Blumenthal, and how the Bush League is handling it.

It signals to me a kind of "banality of evil" moment with this rogue administration, using the same tricks, the same flourishes, the same rhetorical approaches, over and over and over again. You wrote...

The usual atmospherics are pumped up -- sudden panic and fear, an elusive and ubiquitous enemy that assumes many guises and shapes, cherry-picked information to provide a patina of verisimilitude to the danger, followed by a march of authority figures to rescue us.

It's the same damned thing. I think the participant in this dance is the mainstream media, who simply won't go against the Leader on this. This administration's allowed to continue with its wrong-headed course because the Media are letting them get away with it, going along with it, not challenging them on it.

As bad as this administration's criminality has been, it wouldn't have been so readily doable if not for the culpability and timidity of the so-called free press, which has apparently decided it's free only to obey the Leader.

I really don't know what more it'll take -- the majority of Americans are angry and displeased by what's going on, and yet there's a real disconnect between that and how it's portrayed by the press. I'm sure they'll find their teeth again once there's a Democrat in the White House, assuming this administration allows elections in 2008.

Not really surprising, but damn is it frustrating. I'd be curious to keep an eye on Judge Bates, see if he's rewarded down the road with anything roundabout for his yeoman's service to the Bush League. They do take care of their own. I wonder if he's a Federalist Society judge. Just curious.

Even if it were bumped up to a higher court, say, oh, I dunno, the Supremes, that's sadly no guarantee of a fair hearing, given the Roberts/Alito/Thomas/Scalia (RATS) axis, with Kennedy on the fence (adding Kennedy to the alphabet soup, it'd be the STARK axis, which would reflect the prospects of the rule of law in the country).

We know that RATS would support absolutely anything Bush/Cheney/Rove have done. It'll be interesting, however, if it somehow gets bumped higher, how they apply that to precedent -- like they'd basically be trading political loyalty/ideology for good law, so they'd have to limit the precedent of the ruling (as Rehnquist et al. did in Bush v. Gore) and play pure politics, or else make the illegal legal by upholding the outing of Plame as a new precedent.

Either way, they'll disgrace themselves further in following such a path, so my guess is if it were headed their way, they'll punt it.