But apparently both sides figured they’d get more mileage out of dragging things out: Republicans got to run their Traitorcrat ads while Democrats got to posture for their liberal base — all the while knowing perfectly well that this deal was almost certainly the eventual end state. Ladies and gentlemen, your Congress at work.”

Exactly, and just as importantly I imagine is that by stringing this out before rolling over, the Dem Leadersheep kept the question out of play for all the candidates for the entire critical portion of the primary schedule. This will be a hundred tragedies behind by the time the general election rolls around in November. It is all about petty political gamesmanship.

1. The President’s the boss.

2. Anything not compulsory is forbidden, unless I say so.

3. Anything not forbidden is compulsory, unless I say so.

4. I can change my mind whenever I want. I can rewrite the rules constitution whenever I want. I can rewrite history whenever I want.

5. I can change the rules retroactively.

6. I’m not guilty of anything.

7. Stop picking on Dana, Condi, Dick, Addington, Mukasey, and everyone else who works for me, or else you’ll be declared an enemy combatant.

8. It’s all about retroactive immunity for the telcos.

9. The surge in Iraq is working.

10. Stop picking on John McCain, or I’ll install my brother Jeb as the 2008 Republican nominee for President of these United States.

Those are my the new ten commandments.

11. Stop picking on God. He’s my closest confidante. He’s getting mad at you folks for picking on me, and has promised a new flood if y’all don’t settle down.

Can we hope that the next President will overturn all of Shrub’s EOs and directives, and clean out the stables that Bush has made of so much of the government?

Or will we have to show up with the garden implements and the patio lights and help clean house?

That leadership continues to dumbfound. It’s like they’re the new geeks at some trendy southern Californian high school and they can’t take the ribbing from the class clowns or the jocks. They’re so eager to please, the ribbing can only escalate. But it’s not school popularity they’re working with, its our civil liberties.

If the Dems know something critical about how bloody effective this extra-constitutional spying has been, they should put that before the electorate. Since the Repubs haven’t done that, odds are pretty heavy it ain’t there. If the Dems are being blackmailed by the GOP, better to fess up; the voters will re-elect most of them and turn out their blackmailers.

If the Dems are equally beholden to telecoms money – and spurious arguments about voters and jobs (presumably persuasive to someone like Webb in telecom-heavy Virginia) – we should cancel their public employment contracts and elect capable representatives like Donna Edwards in their place. Those jobs will disappear offshore soon enough, as will the local tax base and community investment. Our civil liberties, and holding abusive public officials accountable, are worth more.

THese folks set out to abuse a country, a system, your constitution knowingly. They’re taking sociopathy to a whole new level. Corruption redifined, need a new word…

219. Another emasculation of oversight. The Intelligence Oversight Board is a civilian intelligence oversight panel created in the 1970s with the purpose of notifying the President and the Attorney General of intelligence activities which it deems to be illegal. During the first two years of the Bush Administration, the board was vacant. During the first 5 1/2 years (2001-2006), the board made no notifications –this was while the FBI was playing fast and loose with NSLs, the CIA was engaged in torture and black prisons, and the NSA was conducting massive warrantless wiretapping.

Regarding Horton’s early judgment on Mukasey, he expected him to be an objective, competent Attorney General. Horton later admitted he had been dead wrong. He now thinks Mukasey has abandoned any pretense of being the people’s chief law enforcement officer; he is George Bush’s criminal defense attorney. In my words, a competent version of Alberto Gonzales’ Tom Hagan, consigliere to Don Corleone.