He's a self-described libertarian . . . .

For whatever it's worth, though many people have made this assertion, I actually have not self-applied that label, or any other. People argue about these labels constantly but I find those arguments laregly unproductive because people so rarely use the terms with any agreed upon meaning. For that reason, I prefer to make whatever arguments I make and leave it to others to pick whatever labels they want, and I virtually never (if ever) embrace or reject any specific label someone applies, since the meaning of those lables is always so fluid and imprecise.

I've argued before that the Bush presidency has fostered an ideological/political re-alignment where the terms "right" and "left" (even "conservative" and "liberal") bear little resemblance to what they meant in prior decades, and that those terms are now almost exclusively used to reference whether one is a supporter or opponent of Bush's policies (specifically, neconservative foreign policies and liberty-abridging domestic policies). If one uses that definition, someone might be a "liberal" or "conservative," whereas if one uses the more traditional, 1990s version of those terms, the same person might warrant a completely different label. As but one example, note how this post relies upon Bob Barr to make a critical argument against the Patriot Act -- or how Jack Murtha, long considered one of the most conservative Democrats in the House, is now suddenly the face of the "far left." There are literally countless examples like that. The Joe Lieberman primary challenge was the most vivid example.

I love it when the whole premise of a Greenwald post gets demolished by facts. As Glenn acknowledges in Update III, the report by the Inspector General is the report to Congress required in the reauthorization of the Patriot Act and which serves as one of Congress' primary oversight tools of the NSLs.

Do you really not see how dumb this is? The FBI is part of the Justice Department. It is required by the law to keep these records in order to enable the Inspector General to report to Congress on its activities. When it fails to do so, it violates the law -- just as the FBI and the Inspector General themselves admit.

The fact that The Patriot Act directs the Inspector General's Office of the DOJ, rather than the FBI itself, to file this report does not change any of that. Do you really not understand that?

And do you not see how desperate you are to defend your Leader when you deny that the law has been broken even when the Leader's agencies in question -- the FBI and DOJ -- acknowledge that it has been?

Obstruction of justice is the violation of a law or laws, and for seven years and counting, this Regime has cared not a whit about such technicalities. They go on with their program no matter, and with very few exceptions, nothing is done about it.

Actually, there is much that has changed over the last six years. It's been gradual and slow, but nonetheless undeniable -- unless one's goal is more than just reform of these abuses, but some sort of revolutionary overhaul, in which case, I grant, the current course is unlikely to produce that result.

But what drove Nixon from office? Street marches and fist-pumping, or a combination of investigative journalism, Congressional hearings, and increasingly effective persuasion of American citizens that the twice-elected President was deeply corrupt? What's different now?

If anyone can find that "retraction letter" sent yesterday to Specter by the DOJ (the one referenced in this morning's Post article), I'd be very appreciative. I haven't been able to find that yet.

Unless the court of public opinion makes it absolutely clear that the rule of law means the rule of law, and not what you can get away with, the bedrock under this democracy will continue to erode, chip, dissolve and crumble.

I don't know of anyone who denies - and I certainly don't - that public opinion is critical in imposing meaningful checks. That's my motivation in blogging and related activities, and that's probably true for most people who blog.

The value of hearings, the value of investigations, the value of exposing administration wrongdoing is not that they are just going to crumble from embarrassment or voluntarily comply with anything. The value is that those are tools for changing public opinion, which is absolutely a prerequisite for weakening and then holding accountable this administration. But there are people who constantly insist that even that's not enough - that something "more" is required - but they rarely say what that more is (to show what he means by "more," for instance Che Pasa linked to a website which I read and, from what I can tell, what they do is go to events and hold up signs. Whatever else is true about that activity, that is hardly going to bring down the Bush administration without all of the other work that people so routienly dismiss as irrelevant).