Much deserved in this case.

It seems patently obvious that there are clear, documented, inarguable, and continual violations of Federal law by this Maladministration.

Why hasn't somebody, ANYBODY been prosecuted? Is it the Mukasey paradox? (Was that Marty Lederman's phrase?)

It is happening right in front of our eyes.

And the Democrats are complicit.

How much more damage can be done by the time Bush leaves? (If he leaves and doesn't block the elections.)

Why is it a surprise that Bush is making long term deals with Iraq for military support and bypassing congress? Isn't there anything that will get congressional Democrats to stand up to unchecked power?

The really important question is how much that Bush can hide of what he has already done before he leaves office.

Only 3% of the documents McCain's Indian Affairs committee obtained on Abermoff have been made public. The rest are sealed by a deal that requires both parties to agree to unlock them. How many more criminal acts are hidden just in those documents.

What happens to the Republicans if a Democrat president uses the executive powers that Bush has established and politicizes the DOJ the same way Bush has done?

ISTR a little Clinton-years flap about "The FBI files", which were supposedly FBI files about Clinton's political enemies that mysteriously ended up in the White House. I'd think a president could do a lot better now with all of the unchecked spying powers that were added during Bush's term.

But, as someone once said:

Absolute power is kind of neat.

What I thought was clever phrase that I use to dismiss various conspiracy theories:

If there are two competing explanations for an event and one calls for someone being surprisingly brilliant and the other calls for them to be incredibly stupid - stupidity wins every time."

It occurs to me that this has even greater explanatory power if you substitute stupidity with laziness. The more we learn about the administration's abuses of power, the more it seems that their core motivation is that they simply don't want to be bothered with having to follow the law.

Examples of this argument abound.

I always find that the easiest way to think about complex issues is to simply place myself in the shoes of an individual participant. It helps avoid all the muddiness that results from trying to analyze based on labels such as "corporate masters" or "police state". Just thinking like Joe FBI or NSA agent reveals that laziness is indeed at the core of a lot of evil.

It is not just the Executive or the Congress or the Press or the two-party system that is dysfunctional. If the American people don't think their liberty is worth defending, then there is nothing a small group of aware people can really do, except keep shouting at the top of their lungs until either they are shut up or else the people listen and act.

here:

http://digg.com/politics/Shocking_revelation_Unchecked_government_powers_get_abused

I agree. It seems, more and more, like these guys just do this shit and wait to see what happens. When there are no consequences, they do it some more. Why do things the right way when breaking the law is so easy?

And these are the people who are bitching about Obama's house.

Remember the example of allowing two kids to split a cookie? Tell them in advance that one gets to break the cookie into two pieces and the other one gets to choose which piece they want.

Today, the Congress allows Bush to split the cookie and to eat both pieces. They then dash off another stern letter on just how unfair Bush is being.

Only when the Congress stands up and fights for its proper role in supervision will this long nightmare end.

OT: click my name to find updates on the campaign to support Pakistani lawyers in their quest for the restoration of the rule of law through their declaration of next week as "Black Flag Week". [Yes, our group knows that black flags are often used by anarchists and that would not be consistent with a plea for rule of law. The answer is that Pakistani lawyers are known for their black suits, so black armbands and flags are signs of support for them in this case.]

My father, a lawyer, has volunteered since 2004 to be one of the oversight officials in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

Last year for his birthday I sent him a copy of "How Would a Patriot Act?".

We're trying. I'm not an officer of the courts, but Dad is.. I work to educate him, and he works to make sure things are above board. It's an uphill battle, but your tireless efforts to expose the cynical abuses of government and the lapses in journalism are not falling on deaf, ineffectual ears.

Thanks, Glenn.

Oversight of elections in Cuyahoga County, Ohio..

The systematic dismantling of long-standing checks on abuse of authority in this administration has been astonishing, if anything can be at this point. It absolutely defies explanation to me that some people truly believe these people are working in our best interests. Just how much ass-covering does an administration need to perform before it becomes suspicious to these people? The other day a coworker bemoaned something Bush did but added "at least he did it with integrity." Had my knees not caught on the table I would have shot straight up to the ceiling and blew around like a deflating balloon.

What the hell is going on in this country? Less than a week after Bush used "stay the course" as a slam against Dems who refuse to acknowledge "progress" achieved by the surge, yesterday he uses it as the highest form of praise for McCain. This morning I watched David Gregory on the Today show interviewing Howard Dean, taking a forceful approach to his questioning and tenaciously sticking to unanswered questions until Dean addressed them. Yet this same hack, when interviewing Karl Rove a few months ago, did not once question the nearly continuous stream of non sequiturs and blatant dodges that escaped his pudgy piehole. Why the hell are journalists still scared of Republicans? It's maddening.