What Ted Turner sold was the soul of his baby.

12/30 Mark Kleiman:

The idea that we need to protect our privacy even in the face of the terrorist threat is almost certainly restricted to a minority, though a minority that includes almost everyone you know. So if the question is framed in terms of security v. privacy or liberty, it’s a losing issue for the Democrats, just as Mickey Kaus and Glenn Reynolds hope it will be.

But the idea that the President should obey the law enjoys very widespread support. That’s the frame Democrats, and friends of civil liberty, should try to put around this issue. Just keep repeating “a government of laws, not of men.”

I prefer: “the same laws that have always protected Americans from illegal government actions.”

In Iraq, as in America, the wealthiest get wealthier, the oil barons rule, and backroom deals along with the freedom to lie are paramount for the oil aristocracy.

Finally, we’ve succeeded in bringing a complete dishonestocracy to Iraq.

Today should have been my brother, Matt’s, fiftieth birthday. But I lost him and my older brother, Tom, last summer. Which leaves my brother Mark. And the kid has his head on straight; consider his commentary in a WaPo blog:

What is a war? In the past, war was fought between geographic entities (countries) where, once one country’s leaders surrendered, the war was over, and occupation takes place, at which time rules of engagement between the occupier and occupied change and resistors to the occupation are treated as criminals and not enemies of the state.

How does this work in the case of a (now) stateless group?

The act that the President claims his authorization for the NSA warrantless wiretapping is the Joint Resolution Authorizing the Use of Force Against Terrorists, passed by the Senate and House of Representatives on Sept. 14, 2001. The act states:

(a) That the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

The first question is who are the “nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons”? Is there a list? Is that list static, or can he, unilaterally add to it whenever he chooses? Could he add any organization he chooses, without Congressional authorization (say the ACLU)?

And just when is the war over? When all the leaders are captured? (Maybe that’s why Bin Laden, miraculously, escaped capture at Tora Bora.) Until all members of the group are captured (impossible to do, how would one know)? Until the President determines it is over (why anyone would give up the unlimited powers that the President claims to have is unclear to me)? Until Congress declares the war over? Could Congress act unilaterally to end the war? Could the President put Congress on the list of the organizations who are aiding the terrorists?

It seems to me that September 14 resolution is too broad, too vague, and too dangerous in putting too much discretion in any one person. This is a “state of war” that is eternal in scope. There is no end possible.

If the President has the power he claims to bypass courts and Congress, the sound you hear is all of your civil rights being flushed down the drain. For all time.

Brother, testify.

In 2006, may we all find relief from the pains and insults of the past five years, the degradation of democracy from a cabal of industrialist monarchists who thrive on secrecy, intimidation and who consider the Constitution to be a dead document instead of the law.

It is the time Jefferson anticipated, when a second revolution must take place, to restore real democracy to the United States. Does it require violence? Not necessarily. That will have to depend on the enemy of the people of this republic. If the new Redcoats commit enough violence towards us, it’s simple logic to understand that force must meet force for our own survival.

As Lincoln said, ours is a government of, by, and for the people. Any officials who usurp the will of the people, and:

a) continue to pay lip service to folks like the victims of Katrina, providing window dressing relief while profiteering from their pain;

b) spy on the phone conversations and library records of peaceful groups and individuals with zero ties to terrorism and violence;

c) rob the public treasury to enrich their cronies and the ultra wealthy while putting the majority in financial bondage to the Chinese, Saudi Arabian and other major global money lenders;

d) damage our foreign intelligence apparatus by outing covert agents and attacking the families of whistleblowers and truth speakers;

e) impose theocratic designs upon the operations of a lawful secular government with selective morality mandated to suit their needs instead of the best interests of the nation as a whole;

f) demonstrate that foulmouthed cursers, bullies, chickenhawks, and profiteers will rule us at the expense of troop lives, civilian lives, and the diplomatic and civilized approaches to problem resolutions; and

g) otherwise continue to engage in barbaric practices formerly ascribed to vicious dictators, outside the bounds of international treaties and constitutional law,

then they need to be removed from office through all legal means.

And if the harm to our nation and the majority of its people increases in response, or the legal avenues are blocked to deny justice and inflict violence upon resisters of their illegal, immoral and unAmerican acts, then, as Americans, we will have no recourse left but to resort to civil disobedience, which may include massive national work stoppages, peaceful demonstrations and mobilizations designed to disrupt illegal government activities.

And if the majority is thwarted and further damaged by the jackboots of tyrants? Well, then, Jeffersonian and Jacksonian evocations of