The ACLU, who represents the plaintiffs in Mohamed v. Jeppesen, has appealed from the 9th Circuit en banc decision by petitioning the Supreme Court for certiorari.

With the worldwide coordination against Wikileaks, with the US Justice Department seeking prosecution and the State Department cracking down on its funding sources, with Julian Assange in jail and the press savaging Assange and Wikileaks (and inventing ticky-tack reasons to do so) for making them look bad, you just knew there would be a community-based response. And that’s what we saw today.

So, the President’s chief economic adviser now tells us, for the first time, that if we don’t get even the limited and uncertain stimulative effect of this dubious tax cut package, the US economy runs a heightened risk of a double dip recession.

Republicans are basically telling you their strategy. They will call the expiration of the payroll tax cut an increase. They will use the reduction in revenue to claim that Social Security is in bigger financial trouble than it is. They will try to stop the money from getting restored.

If you support Wikileaks, if you support transparency, accountability, or even just basic free speech, you should not be playing into the government’s semantic game that presents itself as a victim, and Wikileaks as an attacker. As someone who engages in journalism, as someone who engages in activism and dissent, I don’t want these things re-defined as an attack on the state.

I am not an insurgent, and neither are you. Until we realize that, until we understand the difference between journalism and war, then the government will continue to claim it’s acting in self defense.

Stop giving the government an excuse for repression. Stop calling Wikileaks “warfare”.

Let’s move out of the tax-cut frying pan and into the South Korea free trade agreement fire. The Wall Street Journal says that KORUS, which is the nickname the White House has been using for the deal, is picking up support. But the first piece of their article concerns how Max Baucus, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, is very frustrated by it.

I frankly don’t even know how this is nonsense is possible given that the most recent Bloomberg poll taken during and after the deal was announced shows that keeping the tax cuts for the wealthy is unpopular, with only a third of Americans supporting even temporarily keeping the highest tax rate low. By the same token almost every recent poll before the deal was announced, like this CBS News poll, showed the public is behind the original Democratic position about ending the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000 and oppose extending all the tax cuts.

Larry Summers just dusted off the bazooka, telling reporters that, if Obama’s tax deal doesn’t pass, the failure will “materially increase the risk” that the economy will stall out and we will experience a double dip recession. Summers added that without a bill, economic analysts will issue downward revisions in growth/employment.

I really think it’s time to engage with the economic impact of the deal.

In an interview with ABC News, General David Petraeus allowed ABC to spin their Afghanistan poll to put US efforts there in the best possible light, which made it possible for him to then come on camera and appear to be conservative with regard to whether an eventual “victory” can be declared. However, what we don’t hear in ABC’s framing or in Petraeus putting on his “aw, shucks” performance is that the poll also found that “Nationwide, more than half of Afghans interviewed said U.S. and NATO forces should begin to leave the country in mid-2011 or earlier.” Instead, we get only information that is slanted to give the best possible lighting for “progress” and a need to stay in Afghanistan as long as it takes to give the government a chance to take over. In addition to Petraeus’ efforts to spin Afghanistan prior to the upcoming “review”, we find that the whole process is a sham and that the Obama administration is already sharing with the New York Times what the outcome of the “review” will be. Surprise, surprise, we are going to learn that progress has been made and that we need to continue fighting.

Certainly, there are those on the Hill who think “fight harder” is the Plan B. Raul Grijalva wants the GOP to deal with the unemployment and tax-increasing effects and see how they handle it.

That is not my position. Or rather, I come at it in a different way. . . .