Letters to the Editor
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@Baldie
Irrelevant to my point, really, but a good true answer nevertheless.
How was it irrelevant to your point?
Your original question:
It's obviously bunk. Journalists, not soldiers, fought for our right to free speech. And as for the armed forces defending our "freedoms" ... I can't think of a single case of this post-War of 1812. Can anyone here?
I gave you an example of it post WWII. Please don't tell me you are going to argue WWII was an unnecessary use of American military force that didn't protect these liberties for Americans here and abroad and even for other nation's citizens. Let's leave the Civil War and WWI out of it for now. If you are going to argue that case, please provide some evidence. Are you one of those who claim that FDR goaded Japan and Germany into WWII?
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Nothing is illegal
And even to allow [and even coerce or implore] the richest corporations to break our laws at will.
-- GlennGreenwald
-- Kitt
Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it.
U.N. Amb. Andrew Young
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Short Paws
Events in Iraq are moving fast today, pretty good wrap-up at Cole's including comments (!).
Anyway, you guys and wimmens hip to 10x10?
http://tenbyten.org/10x10.html
Had it marked long time and just remembered it again.
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Copy That
Glenn,
Great copy, especially the specific links with totalitatian countries.
One thing.... Remember that us lefty "bloggers" are often called commies, therefore, using the term "rich" as a pejorative will give ammo to those who will fight this ad hominem. (The only way they have....)
Perhaps substitute "richest" with "most powerful," and the last "rich" with "corrupt."
No need to (gag) "punish the successful," when you can slam them for worse things than wealth.
Also, some mention of their ample legal representation, compared to other lawbreakers might be in order.
T
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Glenn re:ad
I know you are time constrained re: the ad's content: but to make it sensibly flow, I'd change this:
"But George Bush and Dick Cheney have been demanding they be given these un-American powers."
To this:
But George Bush and Dick Cheney violated our laws, got caught, and so now have been demanding that Congress grant these un-American powers.
(But I concede all you folks pow-wowing over the ad may have already considered this, and there is some good reason you decided against such a point.)
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Arne:
Neither the government nor the telecoms are contesting its applicability to judicial proceedings arising out of FISA violations (they argued that it applies only to criminal but not civil cases, but that's frivolous and besides the point). Everyone concedes that provision authorizes courts to review evidence in camera and ex parte to determine its adherence to FISA.
Independently, of course, judges have full discretion to review evidence in camera even in the absence of statutory authorization. They do it all the time.
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Ad suggestions
All excellent and helpful - keep them coming. We are giving it to a professional copy writer to turn it into a finished script, then to the production person to turn it into an ad.
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@HRH 10:19
If the chance of two separate coincides happening in relation to a given event are each 1 in 100 then the chance that both coincidences will happen for the same event is 1 in 100*100 or 1 in 10,000. The more coincidences, the lower the probability of all those coincidences happening in relation to the same event.
Assessing the probability of two coincidences requires knowing the number of potential coincidences. With something as complex as 911, that number is huge. Try listing all the pairs of events that would be considered mutually significant if only....... It is almost certain that there will be a few interesting, but meaningless, coincidences just from the random lining up of two otherwise unrelated events.
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mukaseys lies
is there a misprint in the text of m.m's speech? did he say"call from iraq"??next mention of location of call is "afghanistan" in glenn's piece.i'm confusedwhere did the call originate??
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Get Ready For More Of The Same
Great, important catch, Glenn. What an appallingly brazen performance by Mukasey.
The immediate, urgent response from Congress to this flagrant abuse of the public trust and the power of his office by Senate-confirmed federal officer Attorney General Michael Mukasey? S.I.L.E.N.C.E.
Honestly, wouldn't it at least be more intellectually honest for these "legislators" to turn off the lights, board up the windows of Congress and go home? Our federal legislature has about as much meaning today with regard to the affairs of our nation, or impact on its course as does the Iraqi parliament to theirs.
The Constitution is as upside down in D.C. as are so many home mortgages - with the president singlehandedly deciding who this nation will wage war on, why and for how long, and whether and when to cease hostilities - in place of the people by way of their representatives in Congress. [Everyone waiting for a Democratic president to reverse our state of waging war and/or violence overseas is helping to feed right into that perverted line of thinking about the Constitution's war powers.] A declaration of war is the exclusive provenance of the Legislative Branch of government - according to our Founders - and it follows that so is the decision to cease (especially offensive, unprovoked) hostilities by way of a unilateral, simple majority vote in both Houses of Congress - with no authority vested in the Executive to veto such a decision. No legislator should in good conscience assume otherwise unless and until the Supreme Court rules to override the clear intent of Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution, following an affirmative vote by the Legislative Branch to cease hostilities in Iraq (with or without an attempt to repeal 2002's AUMF legislation).
The next PetraeusCrocker Show is on its way to Congress on April 8 & 9, and the latest bait and switch on Iraq is being honed by the Pentagon propagandists right now - in order to maintain the fictional, self-deluding premise that we are in Iraq to save the Iraqis from themselves. In the face, yet again, of simply despicable, tongue-tied S.I.L.E.N.C.E. from our Members of Congress.
Meanwhile, on FISA, the brutish leaders of the Executive Branch are obviously going to pull out every last trick in the Nazi propaganda playbook before they're done. The "Constitution" argument obviously hurt them last time round when wielded in the capable hands of Chris Dodd, so serial dissembler DNI Mike McConnell (literally) waved it around yesterday in his latest effort to deceive, while lamenting how he's tried to retire from the government only to be pulled back into "public" service repeatedly for his self-evidently invaluable, 'apolitical' skills in promoting the best interests of his defense industry colleagues and their authoritarian protectors in the White House:
"The Vietnam veteran, who said he's tried to retire three times, waved a copy of the Constitution and implored students to read it by day's end.
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"This is a precious document. It is why we have survived. It is why we will survive. And it is why we will prevail in the future," he said. "What's the magic? The magic is how it starts: We the people. For the first time in history, government was about the people, not a leader." - DNI Mike McConnell, 3/28/08 in Lindsey Graham's South Carolina
No, Mr. McConnell - the Constitution is why we've survived the way we've survived, as a free and democratic society.
[Thanks for catching that McConnell appearance in SC and excerpting those quotes, tballou.]
Next up, tomorrow, on General Electric's Meet the Press hour: CIA Director Michael Hayden will be prepped to take his turn at disseminating disinformation and freshly-tuned falsehoods about FISA - in another, premeditated assault on the eroding shield that Congress constructed to preserve the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on secret, unchecked government-sponsored domestic security surveillance.