1. If we follow the quaint FISA laws of allegedly shackling the courts and law enforcement from doing their job, my constituents will assume I'm a cowardly, treasonous pinko that sides with terrorist activity.

2. If I obstruct the President's good will to overide many laws that guarantee privacy, the NSA, FBI, HS, CIA and other conscientious survellance entities, they will gather their data files on me and use the information to ruin my career.

3. I'm ashamed that I believed the bs since 1/01 that I've been fed, but it's easier now to go along because Bush has institutionalized the correctness and made respectable that spying on Americans is good for everyone.

4. I never really understood the point of the BOR, Constitution/Amendments and rule of law, after all, they look so impotent when we have a war of terror on the home front and wherever we choose to fight it.

Laws are like cobwebs, for if any trifling or powerless thing falls into them, they hold it fast, but if a thing of any size falls into them it breaks the mesh and escapes.

Anacharsis, circa 600 BC

Have congressional Democrats always been as spineless and wholly lacking in dignity as they have been this decade? I considered myself a Republican until the late 90's so I don't trust any of the things I may have thought about them back then. Is this Congressional impotence directly attributable to Reid and Pelosi or are they just continuing a longstanding tradition? It's frustrating, whatever it is.

What Glenn has written today (and the last paragraph in particular) is essentially a parable of America today.

I have a question and a comment.

Question: Either in his job at the Justice department or as a lawyer, did Tamm take any oath or was he under any duty to do what he did, i.e., report law-breaking?

Comment: Part of the resistance against pursuing the Bush administration for its law-breaking is, I think, the result of a, well, quasi-sincere belief that your country would suffer (not benefit) as a result. I think it comes from the peculiar manner in which high office is elevated to become equated with your nation, rather than treated for what such jobs really are, namely, administrative/executive roles staffed by temporary incumbents.

It's unfortunate, because I feel the opposite is true: the more accountable a political administration, the better for - and better off - the country.

I do understand that the Supreme Court in Garcetti v Ceballes 04-473 (2006) astonishingly found that there was no protection for whistleblower speech "pursuant to job duties".

But Tamm did his whistleblowing two years earlier, in 2004. Wouldn't he have still been covered by the protections of the 1989 Act? Is the Supreme Court opinion in Garcetti v Ceballes retroactive? Or is this proceeding on the basis of some arcane subclause of the Patriot Act?

And, whatever happened to the Whistleblower Protection Act of 2007, crafted to address this "judicial activism"? Last I heard the Congressional version (HR 985) had been passed with significant bipartisan support, despite Bush's threat to veto, and the Senate version (S274) was on a "hold" from Oklahoma's Tom Coburn. Did it ever get passed? Did Bush veto?

Finally, what, if anything, can the new administration do to end this vindictive persecution of a legitimate whistleblower?

5. If we hold accountable the high, powerful officials (from the top, to let's say, committee members responsible) the government would collapse. It could not function without the great leadership if they went to jail.

(It's much safer for the accused, traitorous, whistle blowers to go to jail than our illustrious Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Ashcroft, to name only a few promoters of trust-me rulership).

(If anyone will prosecute BushCheney, it will be their betters among The Bilderbergers.)

Our American ruling class has utterly failed us, from before 9/11 and since then. Indictments of the "Gang of Eight" and complicit Democrats & Republicans would be an excellent remedy, but politics alone will not destroy Pelosi or Reid.

We are entitled to the truth, and the truth is that Cheney, Bush and those they have suborned have attempted to rape this country of its cash and debt instruments through embezzlement, intimidation and propaganda, crony contracts and the greatest dishonesty, fraud and theft that the world has ever known. There is a history for us, & we are not fooled.

Their disruption of governance have cost the world's peoples way too much, and they have been incompetent and incomplete in their failed struggle for patrician dominance. Such an outrage will be punished by their betters among the wealthiest families in the world. The oligarchs will have to buy their way back in, or there will be less of the world they can ever rest in peacefully. Maybe a luxury exile in Dubai, but little else that I can see other than a desert in Saudi Arabia.

Glenn:

You are a breath of fresh air. Thanks for bringing up Tamm's situation. In my gloomier moments during the Bush reign I wondered how long it will be before the Tamm type's are just deemed "enemy combatants" and made to disappear. If Daniel Ellsberg were to have done under Bush what he did under Nixon he would have been shipped off to Syria for questioning. Thankfully, Obama's nomination of Dawn Johnsen and Leon Panetta brings some hope.

Three things that most bothered me most during the Bush years: (1) the inability of our courts to act with expedition and when they eventually acted their pusillanimity; (2) Congress's total abdication of its responsibility, especially under the Democrats; and (3) the use by the FBI of those letters that threatened people with criminal punishment if they revealed its contents. The latter making all the recipients co-conspirators in the FBI's inanities.

But that's not guaranteed at all -- whether they'd be willing to come in and quash an ongoing investigation of this type.

That's not what I would be asking for. We should be demanding that Holder re-hire the guy at a more senior position than before, grant back-pay, and put him in charge of protecting whistle-blowers.

You think the Republicans would settle for less, were the positions reversed? I don't think so. The would add a Medal of Freedom to the deal.

If nothing else Holder and Obama should be thinking about how they will look when the Hollywood blockbuster on the story comes out.