The Dems should be asking themselves: “Hmmmm, if I sign-on with Bush on Warrantless Domestic Spying, will future revelations about Targeting Innocent Citizens, Media, Politicians, Businesspeople, etc, make me a party to Fascist Enablement?”

Whitehouse can destroy his promising career, in less than an hour from now…

Just like the Dems have anointed Hillary?

pogo — Yes, the astonishingly ballsy maneuver of saying “Hey, flip the onus on the Bush Administration and then watch them make the case disappear altogether by gumming up the works entirely” is just ludicrous on its face. And if it were any other Administration, I’d start to wonder if it were April Fool’s day.

Sometimes, you just have marvel at the sheer jackassery that they try and pull off. That they sometimes succeed at it is evidence of just how much shit they are throwing at the fan — you can’t dodge all of it, I suppose, but this one is a matter of fundamentals in my book. And every lawyer out there in the audience knows exactly how ludicrous it is to think that telecom companies — with both scads of highly trained, highly paid in-house counsel and squadrons of law firms on retainer full of equally well-paid and well-trained lawyers — didn’t know what they were doing in this. They knew exactly what the law required, what the normal course of business was, what warrants and subpoenas require in terms of proof from the government, what it meant to allow them to install illegal domestic spying equipment ON THE TELECOM’S PREMISES without court order of legality of doing so…the list is endless, and it points to a substantial level of culpibility.

I swear, this is both appalling and irritating on so many levels, not the least of which is watching elected members of Congress be apologists for illegal behavior. The Founders must be rolling in their graves.

Exactly. Christy – I’ve worked in the telecom industry now for 8 years and I can tell you that with these big guys, EVERYTHING take major time. Want to discuss “possibly” working together? You get sent a Nondisclosure Agreement that is between 15 and 25 pages long. Ditto if you want to attach to their poles. This was not a “4:40 in the afternoon on a Friday emergency phone call, quick we have to have a decision immediately and do something RIGHT NOW” sort of thing. I have had those sorts of phone calls on Friday afternoon and those are the ones where nothing will get done because the lawyer(s) you need to talk to have already left for the day and no one will deal with it until at least Tuesday.
So, whoever “did the deal” (I’m still going with ATT and then everyone else got snagged because they were in the same cables as ATT)had everything in writing – and it took months and months of discussions, believe me. Shoot – even on Nondisclosure, I’ve had Verizon lawyers take two weeks of back and forth on one word.
No wonder the Qwest guy is talking about NSA approaching them six months before 9/11 — putting this sort of thing in place, just on paper, takes a whole lotta time.

The Washington press conference announcing the Robertson endorsement was carefully constructed to make it all look like an alliance of strict-constructionist legal philosophers. Introducing the televangelist was not the campaign’s director of evangelical outreach, or a political figure known for sharing Robertson’s literal reading of the Book of Revelation. Instead the task fell to Ted Olson, the former solicitor general in the Bush Justice Department, a leading conservative legal thinker. The message was clear: This melding of minds was about putting more Antonin Scalias on the Supreme Court, not about Giuliani’s personal life and beliefs.

TPM

Makes me think that the people behind the curtain, who are calling the shots for the Reichwing, have picked Rudy and the GOP primary is Kabuki.

pogo — Yes, the astonishingly ballsy maneuver of saying “Hey, flip the onus on the Bush Administration and then watch them make the case disappear altogether by gumming up the works entirely” is just ludicrous on its face. […]
I swear, this is both appalling and irritating on so many levels, not the least of which is watching elected members of Congress be apologists for illegal behavior. The Founders must be rolling in their graves.

Well, the Founders WERE spinning in their graves but the spin ramped up to such a high RPM that they all exploded catastrophically due to centripedal forces. The Founders, even in their graves, are now LONG gone and irrecoverable.