I take back my comment this morning that only Feingold on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence would be a suitable Chair. Here is Sheldon Whitehouse from this morning, on the Senate floor, interpreting his reading of OLC documents, as quoted by Emptywheel over at Firedoglake:

In a nutshell, these three Bush administration legal propositions boil down to this:

"I don't have to follow my own rules, and I don't have to tell you when I'm breaking them."

"I get to determine what my own powers are."

"The Department of Justice doesn't tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is."

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2007/12/07/whitehouse-rips-the-white-house/

Selise is working on developing a link to video of Whitehouse's comments, but there seem to be techinical issues at CSPAN.

I'm less than halfway through the comments over there, but it is not an exaggeration to point out that we now are in the midst of a constitutional crisis. There is interesting speculation that I think is more hopeful than warranted that Mukasey might actually do something to help the nation here. I sincerely hope that I am wrong, but I think he will only make things worse. In my opinion, this one is headed to the Supreme Court and the fight will be truly ugly. Some folks over there on the comment thread are already suggesting that other countries may well have to come to our aide before the crisis is over.

What have we become?

Sometimes I wonder if the best choice is simply to vote for the candidate who seems most likely to accelerate the process in the hope that things might actually get bad enough quickly enough so that the whole edifice might collapse and we could start over. What do you think, Che? Giuliani in 2008?

What makes you think this isn't how we already ended up with Bush, if not the first time, then the second? It's easy to make a comment like that when you can just sit and watch from the sidelines because you don't have much skin of your own in the game, but lots of people who do have been sorely affected by this maladministration.

I don't usually respond to comments like this one, but the "bad faith" negativity on this thread that wants to encourage everyone else either to give up or start a revolution (since nothing else would be supportable) is beginning to wear...

Now that you are addressing one another directly, Aycharaych, Talesofunrest, & Dounia, maybe you could take it to an IM session? Kitt's right; we're not that interested, and LWM has too much patience... not for incrementalism, but for responding to your comments. I usually have more patience, too, but it's just about used up.

After I posted, I realized that the mechanism I was describing is actually pretty close to the shock doctrine, but I tend to think of the shock doctrine as specific to the scenario of an established government taking advantage of a bad situation to push an agenda, which wasn’t what I was talking about. At any rate, I think we understand each other. And you’re right: I probably don’t want to vote for Mr. Giuliani. I am just saying that sometimes I am tempted. It’s the frog in the pot thing. Raise the temperature slowly and the frog will sit there and will be boiled to death. Goose the temperature quickly enough, and the frog jumps.

Senator Rockefeller has betrayed the public trust vested in him. He has side with criminals over the rule of law, with traitors over patriots, with those attacking the nation's Constitution over those of us trying to protect it ... in short he has betrayed everything America stands for.

He should be impeached!

I have no particular affinity for many, if any, Democratic politicians. A few, perhaps. I don't care for politicians in general. Some are better than others. What does concern me is the younger idealists who think there are quick and easy solutions to the many intractable problems we face. When pressed for these solutions... crickets. Unless it involves some foolishness like a Ron Paul/Dennis Kucinich ticket. That might work, if it had a snowball's chance in hell of happening. Unity '08 is about as popular as the Victory Caucus. If wishes were horses...

David Neiwert was just saying today that when he was young and idealistic he campaigned for John Anderson in 1980. That got him Ronald Reagan and he learned quick. I will tell you this, if the Dems do take seats and the WH, and don't shape up quick after 2009, I'll start threatening to defect and they'll have it coming. I'd welcome any viable third party, with a real chance to seize power, that emerged out of this nightmare. It is not impossible, just improbable. But that's really up to the Democrats. Hell, 20 years from now, we might all be Republicans again.

Real frogs jump even if the water is turned up slowly. That is, if you can find one. They have receded, apparently they noticed global warming in these parts before the humans did. Word has it they are elsewhere discussing boiling humans slowly.

If nothing else, there's a major difference between the Parties in their rhetoric, even if not their actions. While President Hillary might be almost as bad as any of her potential rivals in actuality, the nature of the debates that take place around her will definitely have more reasonable voices beung heard more clearly.

Besides, aren't we all looking forward to the day when right-wingers are screaming about the erosion of civil-liberties and the evils of executive overreach?!

I am not a lawyer, but I thought that if the government lost evidence that was material to the case, should not at least a misrial be declared?

The Judges are, to me, just as guilty. They will express "concern", will "find things hard to believe", but then they go and rule against the defendant anyway, saying that the government "acted in good faith" not to "prejudice the defendant", or they acted "without negligence". So while they may "use stern language" against the government, the defendant is still screwed by lost/manipulated evidence.

Our whole political process is completely broken. We have an out of control executive branch. We have corruption, sloth, and cowardice in congress in both political parties. We have a political press that is absolutely worthless.

But we also have a group of lifetime appointed federal judges that is dominated by right-wingers (there are exceptions).

That covers all three branches as well as the "fourth estate".

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." — Ed Howdershelt