The "aristocrat may be excused to commit more murderous crimes. 'Um steal real estate with black gold? Yes!

Duncan greets Macbeth. `The sin of my ingratitude even now was heavy upon me.

Thou art so far before,

That swiftest wring of recompense is slow To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserved,

That the proportion both of thanks and payment Might have been mine. Only I have left to say,

More is due than more than all can pay.

Macbeth can hardly claim to be undervalued by Duncan-but he kills him nonetheless.

Macbeth wonders `What more about Macbeth when he sees his setting domestic lace.

Macbeth sure had it made? The castle ~. `This castle has a pleasant seat; the air,

Nimbly and sweet recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. People set out to ruin.

The lust for power destroys many FOOLS. The motive for future crimes? 'Um so FOOLISH!

P.S. One tin can fetches 5-cents each. Drink Moosehead beer in tin cans? sthu. o'erleaps. okay.

I reiterate my original question: does the GOP understand what it is doing here?... Why is the GOP so hell-bent on authorizing surveillance powers that can and likely will be turned on them in the near future? Surely they aren't so naive to think they will be overlooked?

I think the phrase is "strong delusion."

With a helping of oblivious compulsion.

They are compulsively hell-bent on establishing a tyranny.

Think of a smarmy school kid who has so aligned and identified himself with the teacher that he takes sides with the teacher's imposing draconian rules against the class. He forgets he will be under the same rules and friendless among his classmates.

This terrible piece of legislation needs to get through the senate, then? Outstanding!

In addition to appropriate speeches related to the wholesale sell-off of our personal freedoms and the perverse extention of executive powers under the current rogue administration, I would like to propose the following be entered into the congressional record:

The Constitution of the United States of America

The Bill of Rights

1984 by George Orwell (in its entirety)

Civil Disobedience by Hank Thoreau

On Civil Disobedience by Woody Allen (I particularly like the suggestion to call members of "the establishment" and sing "Bess, You is my Woman Now")

How Would A Patriot Act by some blogger guy whose name eludes me.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce

The Unabridged Lyrcis of Bob Dylan 1962-Present

If there are any Democrats left who want us to believe in them, we will see serious opposition to this thing.

Was it Robert Niemuller (sp) who said : When they slaughtered the elk, moose, and buffalo I said nothing? I was hush when they killed the Jewish people. I was drinking Mountain Dew soda pop with 18 spoons of sugar per can when war mongers financed a `Nam fiasco and bombed the peasants.

I was quiet.

Then it got bad!

Thugs came to eat the blueberries.

GOPS etc., scare red cardinals away.

I'm tickled pink to be Amened by good celery! I would also be honored to be subjected to erudite scorn by Mr. Timberman. By LWM, not so much.

That lesser worthy responded to my assertion that the telecom capitulation is the worst outrage of my lifetime, by pointing out a variety of worse outrages from before either of our lifetimes. The relevance of the latter to the former escapes me. (I should clarify that this is the worst incident of my lifetime as political betrayal, not the worst in its inherent evil. Betrayal has a way of stirring anger that evils perpetrated by known enemies can't.)

I'm aware of all those old horrors. Not infrequently through these seven lean years, I've taken comfort from the fact that our Republic eventually rose above them.

But that comfort is tempered by the worry that there's been a structural change in the country's ability to right itself.

To take a couple of LWM's examples: all but one of the Alien and Sedition Acts had sunset provisions of three years or less. (The last was repealed after four years.) Today, Pelosi takes pride that she's secured a sunset on the FISA expansion twice that long. We've already lived with the Patriot Act for nearly seven years, and the only changes have been to strengthen it. Debs was tried, under Wilson's Sedition Act, and then jailed for three years. Guantanamo detainees have been jailed for more than double that, still with no prospect of even a trial.

The arc of history would seem to be getting longer.

The role of money in politics has a lot to do with that, and it's a role we saw before in the long Gilded Age, the closest analogy to these forty years following on Nixon's morning. The consolidation of the media has even more to do with it. A large network of opposition newspapers howled - LWM would say, hysterically - when the A&S acts were passed. Now, the ordinary citizen hears essentially nothing of what we - or the honorable majority of elected Democrats, muzzled now by their "leaders" - have to say about the present assault on the Constitution.

I'd like to believe the FISA abomination is the crest of one of the last waves in a receding tide. I will be working to make it so. But the forces of reaction still hold many cards. Among the trumps are the perfidious Dem leadership.

Think of a smarmy school kid who has so aligned and identified himself with the teacher that he takes sides with the teacher's imposing draconian rules against the class. He forgets he will be under the same rules and friendless among his classmates. -- Bendere Dondat

While the image of John Hagee being dragged away by MIBs never to be seen again sounds almost pleasant, its not a fate I would wish on anyone (George W Bush included).

But then I'm just someone who believes in inherent human dignity and other such liberal concepts.

Helen Marhsall wrote:

and in the future it will be known as the day that any American who cared about the Constitution heard that the Democratic Party handed Bush the shovel with which to bury it

Exactly! And IF they go through with this perfidy and bury the Constitution, nothing else matters. It won't mean diddly or squat who gets elected. It is all pro forma and of little consequence in the big picture. Whatever distinguished this country, or one party from the other, will have been utterly neutralized.

People (some) say - wait until Obama is elected and he will jettison this offal. But he lacks the power to repeal a law already passed.

If the Ds go through with this abomination they can count me out as ever voting for them again, and I will work against them and their cowardly candidates- party at every turn.

'Nuff said!