crayz.org

For a good, detailed run down of exactly what disgusting, spineless, lying sacks of shit the Democratic FISA flippers are, read this

As Ezra Klein summarizes:

Julian goes through the changes to the bill one by one, and demonstrates what an absurd, and even insulting, farce it's been for the Democrats to call this some kind of victory. They opposed the original FISA bill because it allowed for warrantless surveillance of Americans and legal immunity for telecom companies who turn over information to the government. The revised FISA bill, as Julian explains, allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans and legal immunity for telecom companies who turn over information to the government. So there are two options here: Either the Democrats were lying about why they opposed the bill in the first place, or they're lying about having extracted meaningful concessions on the bill now. Whichever you choose, it's been a shameful, saddening performance.

Frank Rich writes an absolutely damning indictment of this administration, this government, and this country:

In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite. That’s why a Mukasey can be elevated to power with bipartisan support and we barely shrug.

This is a signal difference from the Vietnam era, and not necessarily for the better. During that unpopular war, disaffected Americans took to the streets and sometimes broke laws in an angry assault on American governmental institutions. The Bush years have brought an even more effective assault on those institutions from within. While the public has not erupted in riots, the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like General Musharraf’s....

To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal.

This is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it. They’re falling over each other to expand Gitmo, see who can promise the most torture and abridge the largest number of constitutional rights....

That Mr. Schumer is willing to employ blatant Catch-22 illogic to pretend that Mr. Mukasey’s pledge on waterboarding has any force shows what pathetic crumbs the Democrats will settle for after all these years of being beaten down. The judges and lawyers challenging General Musharraf have more fight left in them than this

I really do wonder some days why people aren't rioting in the streets

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an interview with Glen Greenwald:

We have evidence of an NSA-controlled room in the Folsom Street AT&T facilities in San Francisco. We have evidence that AT&T diverted copies of everyone's Internet traffic into that room. And we know that there's very sophisticated equipment in that room that is capable of doing real-time analysis analysis of the Internet traffic that is getting routed into there.

And by everything, we mean nothing:

A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal....

Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.