This post from Mr. Greenwald is spot on!

I'd say the main reason that the media is ignoring this part of the telecom story is because they don't understand the legal 'discovery' process.

The media sees trials and press conferences about jury verdicts. That's it. They don't see all the discovery depositions and interrogatories, the real dirty work of the legal world. This is where the material Mr. Greenwald is talking about is developed -- under oath.

A couple well crafted Requests for Admissions in a case against some of these companies could be devastating to current white house occupants.

Hehe.

RP is not KB4Hire, nor vice versa.

He is an independent agent.

...these civil-suits have been going on for years, with apparently no impact on the ability for Bush to spy on "terrurists", but all of sudden, just a matter of days ago, if the telecoms are not granted immunity by Congress immediately, the "terrurists" kill us all.

Or even worse pre-empt regularly scheduled programming.

In the exchange between Helen Thomas and Dana Perino that kovie provided earlier, Perino says the following:

And the facts are that companies were asked to help, and they were helped --

I'm sure she meant to say, "And the facts are that companies were asked to help, and they helped --"

But, what actually came out was that the phone companies were helped.

Yes, Dana. Yes they were. Thank you for that.

The telecom lawsuits are the last hope for finding any of this out. They're the last hope for ever having this still-secret behavior subjected to the rule of law and enabling the American people to learn about what their Government did for years in illegally spying on them.

It very well may be that the lawsuits are the last hope for the rule of law in this case but, I see a deeper problem with not investigating and prosecuting this lawlessness. At least deeper in the sense when we look at the history of secret government actions and how they eventually come to light.

As an example during Iran-contra there was massive amounts of direct evidence that the war in Nicaragua was being funded by drug running. I still remember the names of some the guys involved: (Robert Owen Ollie North's "personal courier" and John Hull a longtime CIA asset that owned a large plantation just across the border from Nicaragua where the war was being planned and the arms for drugs was flowing). It was so painfully obvious that the moratorium on funding the contras led directly to drug funding for that war.

The closest that this information ever got into the mainstream consciousness was YEARS after it was actually going on. When did Iran-contra break? 1986 IIRC. Drug funding was somehow completely ignored. When did the Mercury News finally start talking about it? 1996 IIRC. And, we all know how well that went for the journalist and paper.

This is my deeper concern. Not holding lawlessness accountable now leads to the stories finally surfacing years after the fact but now their easily placed into the "suspect" category like some urban legend about Spanish flies and gearshifters.

We seem to live in an age where we have no shared facts and those that do finally come to the surface are easily distorted into propaganda. If only we had a media in this country of some sort.

ondelette is so relevant, focused, and as Glenn has said, some of us are...

26% non-sequiturs.

okay. I agree. Let's collect bobbling doll caricature facsimile's of MSN's Press and place them on our back window Suv's? The neocon doll can wave goodbye. huh.

Glenn's green thumb can stick-forth and plumb into some good porky-pie?

Drudge may rumor: G.G. did bribe his law-professor with bar-room ten-dollar bills?

At least some dang attorney speaks to the no-leg-vets coming home from the dang war.

`

gads - the gop ask, 'you war vets want a spaghetti bolognese dish with rice meat balls'...?...

OR - you want some moth balls, matzo balls, and/or, do you brain-jarred soldiers want Texan Ranch hemorrhoid sauce on the green commander-in-chief salad?

Do you want a army to attack the Brie Cheese? O, visit the right-wing PICNIK?

Do you want a wedge,

of Limburger cheese?

Ya's need a stateside job with security?

The GOP's circus needs a marshmallow juggler.

O, if you wear a burqa at Disneyland - drive demolition bumper cars.

O, greet at the airports the soldiers with no legs and brains and say, 'Howdy!"

O, GWB can do that? Wow. And that's the gospel truth... Alleluia, and hoopla hoop.

I think that's what chapped my ass about the "in public" bit from the press conference.

I get a sneaky feeling that the ... grain-bandaged, I mean crane-sandwiched, I mean brain-damaged ... preznit was thinking that "suck it up" was some kind of a 'dirty' thing, not to be mentioned in public. Of course, for Dubya, perhaps all the "suck[ing] it up" he does has less to do with perseverance and fortitude (alien concepts to him, I've no doubt) than with a more literal type of activity. Was Jeff Gannon in attendance anywhere? Maybe Dubya's mind went astray....

Cheers,

What we need is a nunnery that makes good Devil's Cake?

I heard Geraldine Ferrari and Ellen Goodman from Boston.

I'll vote for a new Kitchen Help Crew who shave the legs of GWB?

The sight-impaired cooks who are now in the White House serve sauerkraut rice soup.

hell. everyone in media understands the real issues here. They'd have to have an IQ lower than a rutabaga's not to.

Nope, Glenn, they ALL get it. But they don't want to offend all their right-wing friends, associates, bosses, employees.

Nearly the entire MSM has been infected with "don't-offend-Dick-Cheney-itis." That's the disease that makes you desperate to fawn at the seat of power for as long as possible.

You've convinced me. The MSM and it's lackies are nothing more than a bunch of fawning lap-dogs. And that's an insult to lap-dogs.

At the Post Office today I saw a caricature mug-shot of you...

The Ten Most Wanted Lawyer list of Lawyers depicted www.Salon.com

The photo had you, thumb-tacked on a cork-board, with green Tacks in both eyes.

.... The green thumb tacks had you poked in the eyes with green thumbs (Tacked), ouch!