There is too good a likelihood that the present administration has used the cover of national security to spy on and hamstring its political opponents.-- Holly McLachlan

Do you have any evidence, or are you just indulging in wishful thinking that your President is like Putin or Chavez?
There certainly was plenty of evidence around the FBI files and absolutely no repercussions for the Clintons. Assuming there was some sort of evidence shouldn't Bush get the same treatment as the Clintons? Or for that matter feted at the UN like all the other totalitarians?

Mona,

We can agree that Henry Luce was not "insane right." I think that Time has historically leaned right (you may disagree), that comparatively it is currently far right, but that the current era Time is not crazy. The major point I hoped to make was that it may not suffice to correct individual columnists like Joe Klein, it may not even suffice to punish their editors, but one may have to find a way to apply pressure to the the publishers who hire the editors and columnists and journalists and ombudsmen. We are talking Time, Warner, AOL here.

I think you misunderstood that I was being sardonic. I don't actually think your observation (about the valuable "service" Klein has performed in exposing the "ambiguity" of the legal language) was a good one. It's more that I'm just amazed at your ability to come up with these rejoinders. In this case (which could not be more black-and-white/open-and-shut and clearly has Klein backpedaling) I'm legitimately delighted at your cleverness; you've found a way to defend Klein, which I didn't even think was theoretically possible. I don't know why I should be surprised; last month you as much as admitted that your modus operandi is to come up with whatever language you can for the sole purpose of pushing back against Greenwald no matter how ridiculous or contradictory the necessary position becomes. Like a Joseph Heller character, you are a true rhetorical contortionist, and I salute your tireless efforts to uphold the status quo and squelch dissent.

Journalists are continually bombarded with rumors, often scurrilous. They are not news. Rumors only become news when they are confirmed, cross-checked and responded to by the target of the attack. -Joe Klein November 17th, Swampland.

As is obvious from the report, there was not a requirement that he belong to a nation state, only to a terrorist organization to be an "agent of a foreign power".

Sadly my memory is not photographic. The point remains that the sticking point was labeling Moussaoui as part of a recognized organization. It's "technicality" exactly like the possibility of someone surveilled speaking to someone in the US. It looks like no warrant, no surveillance. Just like US citizens. Just as Klein wrote.

Joseph Heller wrote about the absurdity of those who order others to war. Would you care to comment?-- ondelette

It depends on what kind of war you're fighting. This opinion by Shelby Steele makes distinctions about kinds of wars and why our latest is politically difficult. Personally, I'd be fine with us getting out of everyone elses way and letting them slug it out amongst themselves.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010909

I want to echo what other comments have said about TIME/WARNER's possible conflict of interest regarding the promotion of telecom immunity and specifically regarding their cable based VOIP.

Time needs to state categorically on the record whether their corporate parent will benefit from this legislation.

I wonder if Klein had the professionalism to ask his boss this question before he began writing on the subject.

What's with the "falsehood" nonsense? Joe Klein is a conscious, habitual LIAR who is egged on by his sleazy editors.

Klein's blogging is painful anyway, from his first post prior to this debacle:

Fred Kaplan of Slate is excellent, as always,

I stopped reading right there. If anyone else with nothing better to do wants to read a post by a purported liberal who thinks any Kaplan is "excellent" I have a few old phone books I can loan you instead. You'd still understand foreign policy better than Klein or Kaplan.

Klein is like Joe Lieberman in pundit form.

I think there's a simple reason he can't climb down. He's Time's token "liberal" columnist. All his juice--like that of other faux liberal pundits like Richard Cohen and faux Dem politicians like Joe Lieberman--comes from being the "left" guy who agrees with the right on national security. That's his paycheck right there. But it doesn't work if you get caught red-handed passing along GOP disinformation without even bothering to check its accuracy. Suddenly you're not a free thinking maverick, you're just an ordinary rightwing tool like Limbaugh or any other GOP shill. Kinda blows the whole act. He can't apologize for being wrong without admitting he willingly acted as a GOP conduit--it's really the only explanation. So he has to muddy the waters and claim it's all so complicated and abstruse and legalistic, and try to trivialize the whole matter. He has no other choice.

His silence on the topic is thunderous.

Yes, and so is his silence on how fucking dumb you are. How long can Glenn Greenwald hold off calling you an idiot?

Iraq is now as safe as in 2004! Victory! And permanent bases for all! Hooray imperialism.

Thanks to Paul Dirks for pointing to Klein's remarkably unselfconscious confessional article,

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1670184,00.html

For me, the most telling line in the article is this: "Is Merle Haggard indicative of a larger movement among his white male country brethren? This is a key to the next election." The idea that conservative white males, who make up no more than eighteen percent of the electorate (generously estimated), are "a key to the next election" is what drives two-thirds of all punditry in this country today.

White males are the Sunnis of contemporary America. We have long since ceased to constitute an electoral majority, but far too many of us still think and want to act as if we own the country.