"Dick Cheney was a self-aggrandizing criminal who used his knowledge as a Washington insider to subvert both informed public debate about matters of war and peace and to manipulate presidential decisionmaking, sometimes in ways that angered even George W. Bush. 
After his early years of public service, he capitalized on connections he made while being paid by taxpayers to earn tens of millions of dollars presiding over Halliburton. While there, he did business with corrupt Arab autocrats, including some in countries that were enemies of the United States. Upon returning to government, he advanced a theory of the executive that is at odds with the intentions of the founders, successfully encouraged the federal government to illegally spy on innocent Americans, passed on to the public false information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and became directly complicit in a regime of torture for which he should be in jail."

Presumably elaborates on her piece in Boston Review in 2002 (http://bostonreview.net/BR27.5/scarry.html)

Who hasn't been thinking this?

This is deeply shameful.

I deeply resent the way my country is making me feel like a paranoid conspiracy theorist.

Phil Carter on the "'military analysts' were Pentagon shills" story. Misses, oddly, the difference between _open_ propaganda and this, which hides it source, making it harder for citizens to evaluate, let alone hold accountable.

Happy happy joy joy.

Good riddance; assuming, that is, that the program doesn't just start up again with a different acronym on a different budget (cf. Total Information Awareness)

OF COURSE it's going to be used for political purposes.

So, that whole bit about Congress having the ability to stop intelligence programs involving massive warrantless domestic surveillance? Turns out, not so much.

Loud and prolonged applause.

"We have now the Attorney General of the United States telling Congress that it's not against the law for the President to violate the law if his own Department of Justice says it's not."

Hilzoy on Bush decreeing his authority to over-ride Congressional spending decisions.

And so we come full circle back to Nixon's theory: if the president does it, it cannot, by definition, be illegal. And to fund permanent bases in Iraq, no less.

" If we’re going to start doing this, let’s add special statutory provisions for what the President is empowered to do in case of attack by extraterrestrials, in the case that supervillains seize NORAD, or in the case that intelligent Nazi gorillas ar

My reaction to stories like this is: they can't do that, this is America! But I guess I'm wrong.

One of the commenters is right: the weirdest part of this is that the FBI didn't bother to learn anything about Iranian cuisine. (Their loss.)

White House Office of Legal Counsel lawyer has _himself_ water-boarded to see if it is in fact torture; concludes that it is; writes opinion to that effect; gets fired by Gonzalez.

Watch the scope of legislation change before your very eyes!

Portrait of the politician as an authoritarian creep with a poor understanding of Catholic social teaching

Bush the Jacobin. (Krugman was saying this in, what, 2003 at the latest?)

A portrait of the politician as power-mad creep

Cruelty and unrestrained power are _features_, not bugs

In which the FBI (1) extracts a false confession about involvement in 9/11 by threatening someone's family, (2) gets caught on this in court, (3) has the details of their (I can't think of another word) police-state tactics in the court decision, and (4)

Homeland Security confiscating hard disks (!) from musicians