I'm trying to think of all the times that a military coup has resulted in the restoration of a democracy.

Hmmm . . . (I'm open to suggestions).

Since the President is going to veto any and all legislation that would be worth anything, and since it seems to take a supermajority in Congress to pass a bill (When did that happen? And what good is a Congressional majority if you now have to have the other two branches of government in your pocket before you can do anything?) why don't we just spend the time impeaching Bush and Cheney instead?

And let's try not to worry quite so much about how it would reflect on Pelosi.

Their wrongdoing is extreme, and only equally extreme corrective measures will suffice.

Yes, but Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to impeach. See, she thinks that 2008 will be a Democratic wipeout if Bush and Cheney are still in power, so she's taken her oath of office off the table.

The pattern is clear: when neoconservatives fall out of office, they consolidate wealth and non-governmental power for a longer-term institutional countermovement. Their natural allies in the energy industries and military contracting sector provide very effective respites for reconsolidation of morale and organization, grooming of future leadership, and creation of "astroterf" political movements.

DCLaw1

They do this in the NSA wiretapping/Iran-Contra off-the-shelf/Vietnam Black Water arena too. Whenever Congress stops a domestic file gathering, like they did to TIA, the proponents form a series of startup companies, gain expertise gathering "customer information and market analysis" for business, and offshore their snooping (RAHS) until it is safe to bring it back. But this time, DCLaw1, I really think they are playing their hand for permanence. They know how to eavesdrop and have implicit permission to do so, they know the media will reign in any question of election results based on exit polling, they may not declare themselves permanent despots but they can certainly pull it off. Or like you say, move to the think tanks and wait for the next cycle.

Again, the question to ask is Where is the press!??

Todays top story at google:

Pakistan's Supreme court has reinstated its chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, four months after Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf suspended him.

It's a good thing our military swears fealty to the Constitution rather than the CIC but you would think that the fact that the USA is one now one step closer to being a military Dictatorship would garner more attention.

Paul Dirks

Are you complaining that it isn't apropos? A bunch of lawyers in ill-fitting suits stage a protest march, get their heads busted by the military, and successfully lecture a military dictator on the rule of law. Sorry, but that takes more cajones than anyone has here.

One of the issues was people disappeared in cooperation with, if not at the request of, the Bush people into an outside the rule of law prison web and torture. It may topple the government -- not into democracy, as the lawyers hope -- but into a civil war in a nuclear state, where the other side is, unlike in Iraq, the real al Qaeda backed by the Taliban.

And the U.S. has already said it is keeping open the possibility of military action -- near the Iranian border. They won't probably ask for Congressional permission, they believe that the unitary executive has already received a permanent and all encompassing authorization of use of military force and no longer needs permission until the last terrorist on the planet expires from heat stroke fifty years from now.

And finally, on a lighter note...

I'm glad Glenn highlighted that quote about the emanations. I choked on my tea last night when I read it. Got visions of Carol Lam springing from Bush's forehead with a horsehair crested helmet and spear.

I think I need a little bit of clarification on what the legal issues surrounding an invocation of executive privilege on documents subpoenaed by Congress. If a person is ordered by a Congressional subpoena to hand over documents, what can the President legally do to stop those documents from being handed over if he wishes to invoke executive privilege? I have gathered from what I've read lately that Congress can hold that individual in contempt for not providing those documents, but what can the President do to stop an individual from complying with a subpoena when he really does have a right to withhold documents from the scrutiny of Congress? Is it possible that the individual could face a situation of choosing between criminal charges pressed by Congress and criminal charges pressed by the President?

This is a brilliant summary of the administration's view of law and power. I don't understand why Congress is not outraged; I frankly don't understand why even Republicans in Congress (except those who have presidential ambitions and are hoping to sit in the catbird seat themselves some day) are not outraged because they are castrated and disempowered by this executive philosophy as much as Democrats are. And I mostly don't understand how we, the people, have fallen into humble acquiescence to the arrogant and in-your-face destruction of our constitutional rights.

I keep writing to my congressmen. I get canned answers thanking me for letting them know my point of view. It must be getting to be time to march. It's way past time to vote them all out and get a fresh start.

If this were a rational world, and we were dealing with rational people, you would think Bush-loving conservatives would be frightened to death of a Democratic President and an entire executive branch that was above the law and not accountable to Congress or the Courts. But that doesn’t seem to disturb them.

Indeed, some of them have convinced themselves that this is exactly what our founding fathers wanted when they wrote the Constitution.

On National Review’s “Ship of Fools” the author Hari asked those on board why liberals were like they were, to which a man named Dave responded:

"The liberals don't believe in the constitution. They don't believe in what the founders wanted – a strong executive," he announces, to nods.

I’m simply unable to process this sort of thinking. I attribute that to still being in what the Bushies refer to as “the reality-based community” where we “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.''

Obviously, they’ve not only created their “own reality” they’ve also created their very own Constitution.