You can enail it to your Congresscritter, y'know. Or DIGG it...

That the Bush administration considers a court order to be such a roadblock to effective law enforcement, and that it continues to wave the flag of 9/11 to encourage the rest of us to ignore the rule of law and hand it more and more indiscriminate power.

Nothing that we learned about 9/11 indicates that the attack would have been stopped if we had more information, really-- the failure was a failure to use the information we had effectively. The Bush administration's solution to this? Add even more information to the pipeline. Has no one heard of the 'signal to noise ratio' in this administration?

But, of course, that assumes anyone in the Bush administration really cares about stopping terrorists, a proposition I'm more and more dubious about as the years go by.

This is one of those situations where my jaw drops and I ask myself "How do these people suppose they can get away with this crap?" Then I have to remind myself that I, unlike many Americans, have been paying attention. The whole basis of the McConnell editorial relies on ignorance of the actual state of the law and it's history. Unfortunately, due to ther way the issue has been presented to America via their teevees, he'll probobly get away with it unless we raise a holy stink.

What if McConnell is not lying, but just a tool himself? Haven't we seen enough stunning incompetence to, maybe, consider McConnell at least as uninformed as Kevin Drum?

(Yes, I do see the irony of accusing the Director of National Intelligence of being that stupid).

Four so far - let's move it up.

I wonder if you could look further into this to find out what courts prosecute these cases of people rounded up thru the NSA program.

If the Pres. wants to make his own rules about who it spies on, then maybe I or many others I talk to could be, just for the reason that I am Anti-Bush. Doing away with FISA takes away my rights should I be spied on without probable cause. AT&T, Verizon & other carriers should be very wary of any program without oversight by Congress. They could be subject to suits by people who maybe just read overseas papers, like myself. Or maybe just google the word "Turkmenistan". Or who look up info on Halliburton or Blackwater. Without FISA. myself and others, could have our civil rights violated by eavesdropping without "probable cause" or "reason".

Besides First Amendment Rights, I remember reading something else in the Constitution (need to go back and find where)that said my words are my own, as well as anything implied by me. I take that to mean that someone can't copyright my words-but I also take it to mean that my words could not be copied-peiod-without my permission. That would mean anyone making some sort of hardcopy of my words without my permission is doing it illegally. I, also take the Constitution, to be a contract between the American people and government-when it is outsourced to 3rd parties other than the governemnt-who can also give that info to someone-it is doing so illegally.

"but the law remains essentially the same"

Note the careful use of the word "essentially" in order to cover for the fact that he's lying like a rug. The law in question was completely rewritten to the administration's specifications shortly after 9-11 but has nevertheless been willfully violated repeatedly ever since it was rewritten.

WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!

None of the setbacks of the last year or two have discouraged the Bush team. They seem intent on pushing forward in every area until they're stopped. Most of the media and many of the Democrats will remain complicit, or will protest moderately and wishfully.

McConnell's brazen post-Comey piece was a clear indication that this is true in the civil liberties area. Even worse are recent indications here and there that a.) work is steadily continuing on infrastructure for a major permanent presence in Iraq, including the largest embassy in the world, which will presumably serve as the base for the occupation of the whole Middle East, and b.) indications that the Bush team's Plan B for Iraq is an attack on Iran.

I've always thought that Bush has borrowed Ariel Sharon's "facts on the ground" strategy, which basically means fucking things up so badly that your domestic opponents' proposals become moot, and only a version of your policy makes any sense any more. Presumably if there's an attack on Iran a crisis will be cooked up first, and the intimidation of opponents is presumably already being organized.

I tend toward pessimism and I've been wrong in the past (thank God!) But I still believe that Bush will only stop if he's forced to by very determined opponents within and without government. There's really no room at all for negotiation, bipartisanship, or compromise. I don't think that the Democrats have quite learned that yet.

Note the careful use of the word "essentially" in order to cover for the fact that he's lying like a rug. The law in question was completely rewritten to the administration's specifications shortly after 9-11 but has nevertheless been willfully violated repeatedly ever since it was rewritten.

He did say "essentially" in one sentence, which is why I said some of his statements are highly misleading. But in other sentences, he flatly said the law has not been changed to take into account technological changes, which is not merely misleading.

It's good to remember that the author of this op-ed, Mitch McConnell, was one of three Senators who introduced the despicable Military Commissions Act, the worst single piece of legislation since the Sedition Act of 1918, that effectively gutted habeas corpus protection on an unparalleled scale.

The overiding goal of this Administration has been to overturn the post-Watergate reforms that attempted to place the executive branch under the rule of law. The lesson that Cheney, Rove, etc. all learned from Watergate, and which they sought to pass on to the ever-malleable George W. Bush, is that executive power must expand, must assert itself over and above the other branches, and that the American people must be convinced that this is all for the best, and, in fact, was the way our government was meant to be. Call it the unitary executive theory or whatever you wish, it is a radical effort to undermine the checks and balances in our Constitution, in order to create an all-powerful leader who is a reflection of an all-powerful Republican party, the leader's base of support and legitimizer. That this party must resort to dishonest and illegal means to keep its grip on power is also an accepted article of faith. Witness the politicization of the Justice Department.

This is McConnell's chief purpose. It is not to improve the government's powers to defeat "The Terrorists." It is to create a powerful executive, who can amass vast amounts of information on Americans and use it however it deems fit.