1.  Thanks so much to John Nowak for the Ed Wood SE DVD.  A great flick, and I look forward to poring through the extras. 2.  After my weeks of doing battle over the NSA “domestic spying” controversy, I am now alerted that Pajamas Media will be covering the (inevitably grandstanding) “hearings” into the legality of the NSA’s foreign surveillance program—a classic media, soundbite-friendly kangaroo court-moment in which Congress, the

Neo-Rethuglican liberal circuit court judge Richard Posner, writing in the New Republic (a one-time periodical stalwart for Democratic principles; now, sadly, a beard for sport coat-and-jeans neocons looking to distinguish themselves from the three piecers of the traditionally conservative Buckley era), raises the now familiar questions about foreign surveillance and presidential authority, and once again comes down on the side of the executive. From “What if Wiretapping Works?” The revelation

Though to listen to many on the left, John Yoo was never so much “deputy assistant attorney general” under President Bush from 2001-2003 as he was a crazed proto-totalitarian race traitor (who, when he wasn’t butchering the constitution, was sitting naked on the lap of the Lincoln Memorial fetishizing executive power), the legal case he lays out briefly to the WSJ’s Paul Gigot on the “Journal Editor Report” for authorization

Here.  Today I’ll let Powerline do some of the heavy lifting on the NSA “domestic spy” story so that I can get out of the house for a bit.  Here, they raise some interesting points about the rather directed coverage of the story from WaPo , Newsweek, and, naturally NYT.  An excerpt: The most deeply misleading aspect of the Times article […] is its treatment of the federal court precedents

Here’s a facsimile [pdf] of the letter delivered by Arlen Specter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales concerning the upcoming Congressional “wiretapping”/”domestic spying” show trial hearings.  The complete text follows:

Rather than launch into another long post detailing my position on the NSA “domestic spying” scandal—a position that at this point must certainly be clear to all but the most doggedly committed contrarians (or else those who have concluded that I am unnaturally dedicated to arguing my position bad faith)—I’ve decided simply to post the bulk of the remarks made by AG Gonzales yesterday as he addressed Georgetown University’s Law

Here is the complete transcript (including Q&A) of Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence and former Director of the NSA General Michael Hayden, addressing the National Press Club yesterday.  (h/t Bob Owens—who believes the transcript hint that all speculation on the technical nature of the intercepts, by both critics in the press and Congress and pundits defending the program, has been way off base; I’m not so sure, but then,

I am tired of having this same NSA conversation—until we know all the facts (and because of what’s left of the classified nature of the program, we’re not likely ever to know all of them), we simply repeatedly rehearse argument for hypotheticals based on scenarios that don’t, to our knowledge, match any of the facts to which those involved in administering of overseeing the program has ever admitted. In fact,

The DoJ has put out another 42 pg brief (PDF) defending its NSA foreign surveillance program, while still maintaining (in my admittedly very cursory skimming of the document) its inherent authority in theory to authorize and continue the program, and so in fact keeping the ongoing legal controversy in the realm of the theoretical, where civil liberty absolutists, partisan liberal Democrats, and rigorous constitutional scholars viewing the program from the

From the ACLU Press release: Saying that the Bush administration’s illegal spying on Americans must end, the American Civil Liberties Union today filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the National Security Agency seeking to stop a secret electronic surveillance program that has been in place since shortly after September 11, 2001. [Translation:  Asserting that law has been broken without having evidence that a law has been broken, the ACLU today filed