The good news is that this viewpoint is self-limiting. As soon as those near-dictatorial powers are being exercised by "Hitlery Clintoon", all the unitary-executive types will rediscover the virtues of limited government.

...I must disagree with Glenn, which I virtually never do. I'm actually amused at how he's channeling Milton Friedman here.

A professional, whether doctor or lawyer, is not a mere tool. It's the job of professionals to offer their judgment, and in dialogue with their patients/clients to determine a course of action. Both lawyers and physicians can and should discharge or transfer their clients and patients if they don't agree with the course of action their clients and patients want. There's no equivalent in law for the role of prescription drugs in medicine - substances that can save or ruin lives depending on whether they're used appropriately. People's health is safeguarded as much as possible by ensuring that a trained professional signs off on the use of these substances.

Those who are familiar with them will recognize the decisive influence of Plato and his acolyte, Leo Strauss, on Mansfield's remarks. (Mansfield has acknowledged such influence in the past.) It is in Plato's dialogues (particularly the Republic, the Statesman, and the Laws) where we first find the idea that the wisdom of the philosopher-king must not be circumscribed by the rule of law. Strauss endorses this at length. See Shadia Drury's books on Strauss and the Straussians, which spell out his views and their implications, and I.F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates for a devastating critique of Plato.

Of course, even if there were any merit to this strange and destructive idea - which there isn't - the notion of George W. Bush as a wise Platonic philosopher-king boggles the mind.

Glenn asks, "How else to explain their reflexive, emphatic and otherwise so-out-of-character defenses of all of these accused and /or convicted criminals?"

Here's how else: It isn't that they're so devoted to their vision that they automatically defend any action in pursuit of it. There's a certain perverse grandeur to that. No, these people are just hoodlums - no different from the Crips or the Bloods. They use every weapon to aggrandize themselves at the expense of others, and oppose every action taken against themselves or one of their gang. Their "ideology" is just a pretext for conspiring against the rest of us.

>We continue to...support those leaders who lose in democratic elections

Not surprising, considering that we ourselves are led by one such.

>other than a deliberate desire to disseminate Bush administration propaganda about the war, it really is virtually impossible to understand why our media's "reports" about the war blindly assume, time and again, that whatever the U.S. government or military says can simply be converted without investigation or skepticism into what they report as "news."

Glenn - Your use of "slothful" at the end of your post gives a more plausible reason. These guys are too lazy to do their own research, or even to think about whether to insert the word "alleged" into reprints of press releases. This doesn't just happen in war reporting - look at how criminal suspects routinely are described as though they're undeniably guilty. It's the same mindset. These guys get paid no matter how little work or thinking they do, so they do as little of either as possible.

>has won re-election by slim margins

In '04, running for a third term, he won by more than 10 points.

A proud Wisconsinite

There's a fourth level - a logical one - on which the claim that amnesty ought to be considered if the White House finally agrees to show them the documents makes no sense.

Presumably, the documents are being requested because what they purportedly reveal - i.e., just what the telecoms were doing - is relevant to the question of whether to grant amnesty. That is, before deciding whether to grant amnesty, legislators should know just what they're granting amnesty for.

If the decision to grant amnesty is made before the documents are seen, as a condition of seeing the documents, then what's the point of seeing them at all? Seeing them then becomes a meaningless exercise.

Mukasey's refusal to say that the President is bound by statute - i.e., by the law - strikes at the heart of the Constitution, and is far more dangerous than his failure to classify waterboarding as torture, deplorable as that is. Yet we're not hearing a peep from Democrats about that issue.

Glenn - You write:

>Paul is the only serious candidate aggressively challenging America's addiction to ruling the world through superior military force and acting as an empire -- not by contesting specific policies (such as the Iraq War) but by calling into question the unexamined root premises of these policies, the ideology that is defining our role in the world.

>both [Paul and Dean] were espousing ideas more substantive and thoughtful on vital issues than any other candidates

Not being fair to Kucinich, are you?

>"Time and friends exist principally to trumpet government claims and minimize and belittle anything to the contrary"..."We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power," [Post Editor Karen] DeYoung said."

Not so, as anybody who remembers the Clinton years will recognize immediately. When the Democrats are in power, the press adopts the adversarial posture of the GOP. As Digby has noted, it is perfectly predictable that the press will rediscover its adversarial responsibilities as soon as a Democrat takes the White House.

>none of the presidential candidates (other than Chris Dodd and Ron Paul) demonstrating the slightest concern over any of it

I expect the MSM to pretend Kucinich doesn't exist, but it's profoundly depressing when you do. See:

http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=76693

Check your history re '44. FDR already had decided to dump Wallace. The convention chose Truman over Justice William O. Douglas.