Dems on the Senate Judiciary Committee already rolled over for the administration, which wants to conduct fishing expeditions on Americans' personal shopping data. Are the Dems in the House Judiciary Committee are teeing up to do the same?

Jeffrey S. White, judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, has entered a new order denying the government's request for a stay pending appeal in the telecommunications companies' documents FOIA case brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in its efforts to investigate the government's warrantless wiretapping. And Judge White did it before the government ever really asked for a stay!

Civil liberties extremists felt they had reason to celebrate when Barack Obama was elected President. It now appears that those celebrations were not justified.

An extraordinary article by a Harvard lecturer and former Chief of Neuropsychiatry at Guantanamo Bay made the shocking claim that "hard-core zealots" had "brains that are structurally and functionally different from us." Furthermore, the article stated, 100,000 "zealots" within the Muslim body politic would have to be eliminated, the way "malignant [cancer] cells" are removed from a healthy body.

Chris Hayes writes a classic. . . .

AG Holder again made it clear that the DOJ will not prosecute interrogators who were "just following orders" validated by the OLC interrogation memos. How sad to see him baptize the Nuremberg Defense, squander the legacy of Justice Jackson, and repudiate one of the finest moments in legal history.

Today, it's another inane installment of the continuing saga of the GOP's longest-running program wherein the buck stops anywhere but here. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the overwrought and not-so-dulcet tones of Kit Bond and friends, in Accountability For Thee, But Not For Me...

You know how Crazy Pete Hoekstra has led the chorus of those who claim Leon Panetta should never have briefed Congress on the secret assassination squads? To his credit, he's doing it even now that Blackwater's role has been revealed. “I think there was a little more drama and intrigue than was warranted,” said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Um, yeah.

Remember when the Obama Administration appealed to a "fundamental compact" between Congress and the Executive Branch when arguing the intelligence community didn't need more oversight? ("Fundamental compact, my ass," I thought was the best response.) Well, Leon Panetta's out with a similar appeal to inflated, but bogus, language in an attempt to avoid increased Congressional oversight.