Mr. President, if some of our “professionals” might be deemed to have committed war crimes UNLESS the Geneva Conventions are disregarded — who is RESPONSIBLE.”

One of my favorite recurring daydreams involves how large the armies of Secret Servicemen will have to be to protect Dubya and Darth when they are no longer in office. Or the number of mercenaries hired by Haliburton. Armed and ready plainclothesmen stretching into the horizon.
You realize, of course, they can NEVER leave the country again. Not without a battalion surrounding and protecting them. Their lives were forfeit the day we invaded Iraq. When Bush comments on how 9/11 changed OUR lives – their life change became far more significant after the Iraq Invasion. Nobody forgets Crimes Against the World!

Just watched Sen. Byrd, Judge Posner, and Yoo on c-span. In a meeting on illegal surveillance Senator Byrd’s flying solo in defense of civil liberties. Posner is alarming in how he believes warrants through a judge is not necessary for intel surveillance. Yoo, well, he’s condescending and arrogant. He has a vocabulary and knows how many tools of government work. He actually broke in to a lecture about the riff between FBI and other agencies in a stupid Tucker Carlson demeanor. I thought a Senator would shut him up. He actually believes his own bullshit.(imagine) He’s a torture kind of guy. He really doesn’t have limitations. One other fellow discussing differences in British and US systems says The British pretty much do it all in terms of intel gathering unrestricted.
Bottom line not a lot of need for warrants, no worries now, move along.
In another meeting I caught just a couple of minutes of Senator Pryor and Barbara Boxer in discussion with an FCC guy on Net Neutrality. Pryor is ready to wave his hand and approve division of the net into three or (what the heck) four separate bandwidths for commerce and god knows what out of the internet today. The FCC guy tells Boxer it wouldn’t be any problem for them and they aren’t worried about it today. Senator Boxer fortunately stands up for the net quite well, but, she was flying solo.
Byrd and Boxer on friday afternoon are great warriors for freedom in this time of what should be called a multide of constitutional crisis. I think they need some help.

THE PRESIDENT: If there’s any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of spinach, it’s flawed logic. I simply can’t accept that. It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of leafy greens who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective, Terry.

My job, and the job of people here in Washington, D.C., is to protect this country. We didn’t ask for this spinach. You might remember the 2000 campaign. I don’t remember spending much time talking about what it might be like to be a Commander-in-Chief in a different kind of war. But this spinach has struck us and they want to strike us again. And we will give our folks the tools necessary to protect the country; that’s our job.

It’s a dangerous world. I wish it wasn’t that way. I wish I could tell the American people, don’t worry about it, they’re not coming again. But spinach is coming again. And that’s why I’ve sent this legislation up to Congress, and that’s why we’ll continue to work with allies in building a vast coalition, to protect not only ourselves, but them. The facts are, is that after 9/11, spinach continued to attack and kill innocent people.

I happen to believe that they’re bound by a common ideology. Matter of fact, I don’t believe that, I know they are. And they want to impose that ideology throughout the broader Middle East. That’s what they have said. It makes sense for the Commander-in-Chief, and all of us involved in protecting this country to listen to the words of the spinach. And I take their words seriously. And that’s what’s going to be necessary to protect this country, is to listen carefully to what they say and stay ahead of them as they try to attack us.

From Michigan came the news that the College Republicans on the campus of the University of Michigan were planning to recruit some young souls with activities like “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day” and “Fun with Guns.” Now, the first one is racist and reprehensible enough, but “Fun with Guns” would have involved students taking aim at cardboard cutouts of Democratic leaders with BB guns.

Fourty-five years ago, Young Repbublicans used to amuse themselves at their meetings by throwing darts at pictures of Adlai Stevenson and Eleanor Roosevelt. I recall that their homecoming float called for a preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. Classy bunch.