"The top 3 stories at Memeorandum as of this moment are..."

To be fair, yesterday was an unusually massive news day. That alone would take some starch out of the Comey testimony story. But to see it minimized today the way it is (currently on top at Memorandum, but still surprisingly few articles linked) is personally very frustrating.

On another issue, GG writes:

At this point, how can anyone justify the lack of criminal investigations or the appointment of a Special Counsel?

I note that Comey was the one to appoint Patrick Fitzgerald. Another feather in Comey's cap, in addition to his admirable testimony. My question though is--who in this reeking shambles of a DOJ will ever appoint a Special Counsel. To my mind, Pigs will fly barrel-roles over a frozen Hell before DOJ will appoint. Is there some other entity who can activate a Special Counsel probe into this?

Re: Pink Panther...

Have you seen "The President's Analyst" lately? Very timely and topical, in spite of its age. James Coburn looks fairly young.

short summary:

At first, Dr. Sidney Schaefer feels honored and thrilled to be offered the job of the President's Analyst. But then the stress of the job and the paranoid spies that come with a sensitive government position get to him, and he runs away. Now spies from all over the world are after him, either to get him for their own side or to kill him and prevent someone else from getting him.

It would make for a great discussion here, if enough of GG's readers have seen it recently enough.

If you had been paying attention, son, you'd know from the outset this nonsense of "power to spy on the enemy" was never the damned issue.

Don't let the troll throw in that favourite maladministration "red herring" about "spy[ing] on the enemy". That's been hashed over waaaaayyy too many times, even here on Greenwald's blog. FISA doesn't even require a warrant for (nor does it or any other law prohibit) spying on foreign al Qaeda. That's always been the case, and probably always will be.

The question is whether they've been spying on "U.S. persons" without a warrant (or FISA court order). IF they can show that the "U.S. person" is an "enemy", they can spy on them as well, as long as they show the FISA court cause. That's what the law requires.

Cheers,

that breaks the camel's back.

Another home run.

Thank you Glenn (and others)

A bit dated, though, don't you think? I mean, really, Ma Bell? I did like the bit about the car gun and the personal gun, the KGB man with Oedipus problems, and what old hippy doesn't miss the comforts of a VW van now and again, but Ma Bell?

In those days, the impersonal evil made sense, somehow. Nowadays, it's all too personal.

You pulled out too late, Lanny.

"Lanny J. Davis, a Washington lawyer and former Clinton White House counsel, said this week he no longer believed the five-member board was sufficiently independent to provide oversight of government surveillance," according to the report."

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Lone_Democrat_quits_White_House_privacy_0516.html

What changed? Domestic spying program had been going for about two years already. It seems like Ashcroft and Cromey had not objected for the first two years of the program. Had they been signing of on approvals previously? Certainly had not been threatening to resign over it previously. So what changed?

I actually shelled out money and own The Presidents Analyst. What distresses me more is the number of young people who haven't seen "Dr. Stranglove" If it were up to me they'd be showing in High School History classes.

Of course the real question is will they be making black-comedies about the GWOT anytime soon?

I guess if we're the only ones who remember it, it probably is really dated. Still... I like a lot of old movies, the kind they don't make any more.

The reason I didn't mention MB was because I didn't want to spoil it, in case anyone who hadn't seen it yet, decided to...

It's been a couple of years since I saw it, but even then, I thought Wow! How prescient. There were some news stories about that time about the wire-tapping, etc.

I have to confess that I'm not sure I've seen all of Strangelove myself. So, I'll move it to the top of my Netflix queue.

Dark comedies? Not likely. Instead, they just make faux reality shows like 24 that apparently serve as meat and potatoes for Bush's GOP and their trolls.

TPM is of course well on top of this.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003232.php

It’s time that the Democrats in Congress blew the lid off of the NSA’s surveillance program. Whatever form it took for those years was blatantly illegal; so egregious that by 2004, not even the administration’s most partisan members could stomach it any longer. We have a right to know what went on then. We publicize the rules under which the government can obtain physical search warrants, and don’t consider revealing those rules to endanger security; there’s no reason we can’t do the same for electronic searches.

How many more times do we need to be shown/told that Bush and Cheney are running an illegal dictatorship without any regard for the constitution, federal & state laws, and the wishes of the people they claim to represent? This is ridiculous. Where is the petioion to impeach? Where do I sign up?

Dr. Strangelove is one of my favorite movies of all time, a perfect satire of childish and frankly stupid mentality that prizes the act, the symbol of security/military power at the total expense of the humans who are the real priority in security!

"We must not allow a mineshaft gap!"

Another good Kubrick movie about the psycho backline-warrior mentality is "Paths of Glory", where a politically ambitious general orders an impossible mission of certain death. He calls dissenters traitors and cowards, and cannot understand the motivations of the honest protagonist. When the suicide mission fails, he blames everyone but himself, to the degree that he attempts to execute 100 men from the battalion for cowardice.

(lots more happens of course, but I don't want to spoil it.)