It took me so long to finally get here that I'll have to leave soon, but just wanted to say that Executive Order 13233 is going to be a problem. I know I'm like a broken record on this, so I'll just post the link to a previous comment:

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/05/olc/permalink/fe6239edbbeb002fbcddee4ae4939a98.html

Am I crazy for being worried about it? [You all don't really have to be brutally honest in answering that.]

Oh! The MAD Team...now we need t-shirts.

Well, there IS that about it.

Don't wreck the place while I'm away. ;-)

Now THAT was funny!

premature accolation

Insects and Origami!

I'll figure out what it is when I can stop laughing.

I second what flashheart said. Thank you.

here for 5 seconds today.

In my opinion, one of his letters is richer than an infinity of them from neoconzoltanwallabycabalofhollywoodetal.

I appreciate how informed and passionate you are.

Good night, all.

wrt: Blame Game

That's one of the more disquieting things I've read recently...and there's been a lot of competition for that appellation.

Where is this all headed?

Good to see [just a little of] you.

Save everything on a WordDoc...for your Anthology.

I look forward to reading it.

the details...but the name "Colleen Crowley" comes to mind. [FBI?]

the details, but the name "Colleen Crowley" comes to mind [FBI]?

As LondonLad would say: Bollox!

wrt: "sanction": That always strikes me as well...very strange.

Old timer Garrison Keillor had something to say about that:

Garrison Keillor on Habeas Corpus, 10/4/06

Congress' shameful retreat from American values

http://www.truthout.org/article/garrison-keillor-congresss-shameful-retreat-from-american-values

This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by President Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts.

It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him. Go back to the Senate of 1964--Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright--and you won't find more than 10 votes for it.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Ideal. Mark their names [...]"

He mentions Fulbright.

In April 1966, “Senator J. William Fulbright delivered a speech at Johns Hopkins University on “the arrogance of power.” He said, “The question I find intriguing is whether a nation so extraordinarily endowed as the United States can overcome that arrogance of power which has afflicted, weakened, and, in some cases, destroyed great nations in the past. […] No one challenges the importance of national consensus, but consensus can be understood in two ways. If it is interpreted to mean unquestioning support of existing policies, its effects can only be pernicious and undemocratic, serving to suppress differences rather than to reconcile them.”

At the time, Senator Fulbright (D) was in the majority party, with a Democratic President (LBJ), and a war which did not loose popular support until spring of 1968. Francis Wilkinson wrote about this, and compared it to our situation in April of 2006. Towards the end of his essay [“Silence of the Lambs”], Wilkinson writes: “At the time Fulbright first tried to put the brake on war in Vietnam, the number of American dead was close to the body count from Iraq today. It took another nine years -- and more than 50,000 more U.S. dead -- before the arrogance Fulbright had identified in 1966 was exhausted.”

Read the essay at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=silence_of_the_lambs

“If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued, not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president - no one is above the law."-Joe Biden

October 29, 2008-“[…] if I honestly believed that the president had violated the Constitution of the United States, and if my colleagues believed that, I think you would have seen the president impeached.”-Pelosi

Oooops! Senior moment. Thanks.

ondelette: Is he being inaugurated as Tribune in addition to President?

We already know that Pelosi wants Congress to be [no, sorry she said] “give Obama the tools he needs”

And speaking of that speech:

Krugman:

Stimulus arithmetic (wonkish but important)

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithmetic-wonkish-but-important/

“[…] The bottom line is this: we’re probably looking at a plan that will shave less than 2 percentage points off the average unemployment rate for the next two years, and possibly quite a lot less. This raises real concerns about whether the incoming administration is lowballing its plans in an attempt to get bipartisan consensus. […]”

More stimulus notes

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/more-stimulus-notes/

“[…] I’d guess that the CBO estimate, which has unemployment averaging 8.3 percent in 2009 and 9 percent in 2010, is actually too optimistic (see 3, below), but even so it puts the Obama plan in perspective: a 3% of GDP plan, with a significant share going to ineffective tax cuts, to fill an 8% or more gap. […]”

is that there are so many compelling comments to respond to...and because of that, not enough time to do it.

But, I guess that's a good thing, all in all.

I'll just keep reading with great interest...

exceedingly difficult to rid ourselves of Cheney's "unitary executive" ideas.

That's very interesting about NewsMax's added C's.

My empathy for the double whamy. Ouch! ;-) They say this too will pass.

to me why the Republicans are so fixated on the Rich pardon?

"your claim that the Executive has all these super-hero powers because of the Great Hoax Known as The War on Terror"

Thanks. Made me laugh.