It is MEDIA Apathy,i.e. Control of News-ee-worthi-ness, which moves the masses or not.

So, Joan, I do agree with previous posters that this story should be the front page focus for several info and opinion pieces on this topic alone.

Palinesque junk should be last or Salon could refer people to The Alaska Times for info. Use YOUR Control of Newsetc. power. Please.

"And when the next Rethuglican administration comes to power, and decides to ramp up to full-blown Police State mode, they won't think twice"

Where have you been? There is NO waiting for it to be a repub coming to power...it's happening NOW under a dem president:

"When the Democratic-led Congress -- with Barack Obama on board -- responded to the NSA scandal by enacting a law (the FISA Amendments Act of 2008) to legalize Bush's criminal surveillance programs and retroactively immunize the private-sector telecom lawbreakers, many of us wrote at the time that the law Obama supported actually authorized even broader eavesdropping powers than the illegal Bush program itself asserted." (Glenn Greenwald)

It's ALL politicians in the system - there is no ethics on EITHER side.

the secret illegal use of our government for their personal perversions and monetary gains. Do you think they will investigate when they finally figure out that the Wallstreet crisis was an outright theft of our treasury?

The thing is, Americans now know that our Treasury had/has way more money than we knew about when we were told it was "too expensive" to provide affordable health care for all of us.

We also can see that the middle class and our votes are expendable to the new administration. After all, who engineered the demise of the American auto industry (besides the speculated-driven price of oil)? Union-bashing/Bankruptcy vs. Wallstreet Bonuses and Total Bailout(with no demand to lend to said middle class)...which is worse? Which impacts you more? Which threatens your way of life more?

Finally, which can you do something about?

Dems= weasels.

"-- is going to test the willingness of Democratic leaders to ignore the lawless Bush-Cheney years."

So far they've been passing that test with flying colors.

"What is the difference between an "assisination ring" and the obliteration of suspected terrorists via drone attack? (as is our habit of late)."

Simple.

Assassination takes out the target and maybe a bystander or a guard.

Drone attacks takes out whoever is where it hits. They don't care about hitting the target.

Drone attacks are to terrorize the population, making them the target. and making them live in fear.

Assassination takes out the leader and the threat of it makes that one person live in fear..

We are practicing terrorism against an innocent unarmed civilian targets for the express purpose of terrorizing people who have nothing to do with us, have done nothing to us, and probably have no idea who we are except that we terrorize them and kill them.

The difference is terrorism. Assassination is not only preferable to terrorism, but preferable to war as well. The defense industry cannot make trillions of dollars off of a team of assassins.

Not enough profit in assassination and no terror at all.

We could have either bought of Saddam Hussein of had him assassinated but that would be to cheap, too easy and too quick.

We have to use the HellFire missiles before their expiration date.

Best used by December 2009.

"What is the difference between an "assisination ring" and the obliteration of suspected terrorists via drone attack? (as is our habit of late)."

Simple.

Assassination takes out the target and maybe a bystander or a guard.

Drone attacks takes out whoever is where it hits. They don't care about hitting the target.

Drone attacks are to terrorize the population, making them the target. and making them live in fear.

Assassination takes out the leader and the threat of it makes that one person live in fear..

We are practicing terrorism against an innocent unarmed civilian targets for the express purpose of terrorizing people who have nothing to do with us, have done nothing to us, and probably have no idea who we are except that we terrorize them and kill them.

The difference is terrorism. Assassination is not only preferable to terrorism, but preferable to war as well. The defense industry cannot make trillions of dollars off of a team of assassins.

Not enough profit in assassination and no terror at all.

We could have either bought of Saddam Hussein of had him assassinated but that would be to cheap, too easy and too quick.

We have to uswe the HleeFire missiles before their expiration date.

Best used by December 2009.

Why? Because nobody cares. Half of the population is too dumb to realize the harm that the Bush years have created, and the other half is more concerned with jobs and health care reform.

The CIA program is censored. We'll never know the full extent of the Bush era's illegal activity. The best that can come out of this is the realization that our freedom is only as secure as our voters are smart, and the results speak for themselves.

If a band of terrorists with box cutters can cause the kind of havoc we've seen during the Bush years, America's weakness lies not with our Constitution but with our leadership and its willingness to break laws hunting for boogeymen in closets.

"The original sin was President Carter's for conceding so much intelligence supervision to Congress in the 1970s. The Obama White House is right to resist giving away any more, ..."

You're right. What we REALLY need to do RIGHT NOW, is give MORE unsupervised and unfettered power to the executive.

How could we all have been so stupid not to realize THAT?

So simple.

Both Republicans and Democrats, Independents too should not only be a freaked out by this but they should investigate it. Even if they keep the investigation from the Press or public because of security reasons. If it is as bad as most Congressional leaders say it's pretty scary. In the public sector I know that all the people regardless of political affiliation are outraged. It's only some politicians who could care less about such disregard for the government and the people who want it to go away. Whoever was involved be it Cheney or Bush or someone else, they need to be brought to justice. If it wasn't Bush or Cheney then they need to be cleared. If the CIA was out of control because of Cheney I wouldn't be surprised (as there was always speculation), but we have to make sure that they never cross that line again.