We do not have a representive democracy. Congress has become the Soviet Era Politburo, and the there is but one political party, the entrenched corporate interests, of which there are two factions. Our splendidly free press functions as official stenographers, never asking the important questions, but blathering on and on how "manly" W looked in his flight suit.

And the rot runs riot through the blood stream of US politics.

It is my opinion that it is revelations such as these, showing the utter disregard for the law, disregard for accountability, and a "Fuck You" Cheneyesque attitude by our "leaders" that will lead to a rapid crumbling of societal adherence to the laws of the land. We are already seeing it clearly playing out in our financial industry. Neuter the SEC, gut regulation of all kinds, and then go rip people off at will! Charge it to the taxpayers, they're good for it!

After all, if we see all these top government officials and powerful corporate executives committing felonies and getting away with it, why should we plebes have to follow the law? Why pay our taxes? Why not hit and run? Why not knowingly rip someone off on that next plumbing/carpentry/financial assessment job? Chances are you won't be held to account, and if you are, simply cite all the criminal activity happening in the halls of government as your teacher.

Oh wait, I forgot, the two tiers of justice thing......yeah, now I remember....the key to holding society together. Preach adherence to the law, harshly punish crimes by those who aren't connected or super wealthy to make examples of them, and then as gov't leaders and corporate raiders, continue to loot America for everything you can, for as long as you can, to as many as you can.

It is apparent that even THIS kind of stuff won't wake the people up. It is certainly hard to have hope for the future of this country and the future of my kids when I see this shit going on uninvestigated and unpunished, with no real reform of any kind being put in place with teeth to back it up.

Speaking of which, more good news: Just watch the Bill Moyers interview from last night with the former top executive of Public Affairs for Cigna as he reveals the inner workings of how insurance companies have been killing americans for decades via "charm offensives" and other immoral and unethical tactics. I cannot stress enough how brilliant is this 35 minute interview as it totally encapsulates everything that is wrong with the way gov't, corporations, lobbyists, and money work in unison to hurt the American people (link at sig).

Sorry for the long rant, but this is just so damn depressing when I want so much more for this country and its people. As always, Glenn, thank you for putting this great material out there, no matter that it is so difficult to read and digest.

And not to beat a dead horse, but this stuff is the best proof yet that electing better Democrats isn't the right way to approach this. It's like being on a speeding train that has lost its brakes and putting tape over the red "brakes out" indicator. Glenn demonstrates today, and nearly every day, that the system is SO broken, it simply needs to be trashed and we need to start over. How will that be done? Perhaps that is what we need to start spending time discussing.

Even that very limited...inquiry revealed that most eavesdropping leads had little or nothing to do with Terrorism.

For me, the above illustrates that the eavesdropping did, however, have everything to do with terror -- that is, with those things that terrify Bush, Cheney, and all those afflicted with the neo-con infection. Their inane babble about those Others who supposedly wake up in the morning "hating freedom" didn't come out of some psychological left field -- it came out of the closet that houses their own demons. Just as some phobias, such as "xeno-" and "homo-", involve not merely fear, but the conversion of fear into hatred, so it is with the freedom-phobes of the Mutated Right.

The fable of waking up in the morning hating freedom is a perfectly natural projection for the neo-con, given that (s)he goes to bed at night TERRIFIED of it. The idea of a vast, teeming citizenry going about its many and infinitely-varied activities -- unsurveilled, unwatched, UNACCOUNTED FOR -- engaged in who-knows-what sorts of acts of (free) enterprise ... all performed in the kind of absolutist, unfettered PRIVACY advocated only by such Far Left, Lunatic Fringe extremists as, say, the Founding Fathers . . .

this, this, THIS is the kind of thing that causes Bush and Cheney types to wake up in a cold, clammy sweat.

As they lie in their beds, shaking from their fears and trying to get back to sleep, does it ever occur to them -- even for a fleeting moment -- that their most fundamental instincts, their "Security trumps Liberty" instincts, are the diametric opposite of those who founded this nation?

To accept the central premise of our political class -- it's unfair to prosecute Bush officials for things that DOJ lawyers told them was legal -- is to destroy the rule of law in the United States.

True that. But there is no effective constituency for the rule of law. As Wikipedia tells us, the rule of law means that "decisions should be made by applying known principles or laws, without the intervention of discretion in their application. This maxim is intended to be a safeguard against arbitrary governance."

But if governance cannot be arbitrary -- if an act (say, torture) is a priori defined as illegal -- then we cannot excuse some while damning others. If there is no discretion in prosecution, then we cannot jail Charles Graner and Lynndie England without even charging their superiors.

That simply will not do.

Our political class is at war. The rule of law is their enemy. They may grudgingly acknowledge that "all men are created equal" nonsense, but in their world, that equality does not survive for long. The rule of law is, at bottom, a check on power. And power seems to have outgrown the need for such bounding.

Sadly, appeals to the rule of law will go nowhere. The rule of law is the very thing the political class finds most objectionable about our silly, utopian visions.