Oh look -- we're at it again:The Central Intelligence Agency secretly detained a suspected member of Al Qaeda for at least six months beginning last summer as part of a program in which C.I.A. officers have been authorized by President Bush to use harsh interrogation techniques, American officials said Friday.... Mr. Bush has defended the use of the secret prisons as a vital tool in American counterterrorism efforts, and last July he

When a democracy's error-correcting mechanisms break down, impunity replaces accountability, and dictatorship replaces democracy. In my first few posts at the Lake a year ago, I looked at how the media, the electoral system, and the judiciary have been subverted as agents of accountability, allowing Republicans and Bush Dogs to run amok without consequence. But this week, there have been some rays of hope following the Senate Democrats' inexcusable FISA cave-in.

Yesterday, House Democrats finally said "enough" and called George Bush's bluff. The President had threatened to leave the country in an intelligence blackout if Congress did not accede to his demands for sweeping warrantless surveillance and telecom immunity. But this, time, for the first time, Democrats said, "we don't believe you."

The Constitution and the principle that no one is above the law suffered a numbing setback, Tuesday, when every Republican Senator, Joe Lieberman and 18 or so faux Democrats voted to gut the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, one of the most important bulwarks again tyrannical government since 1789. It was a stunning loss for America, which once prided itself on protecting individual liberties against an intrusive government.

When the "935 Iraq Falsehoods" report came out, Dan Froomkin noted that the Senate Intel committee's long-overdue Phase II report might actually see the light of day "before the end of Spring." While that would be a nice change of pace -- to actually complete and release a report we've been awaiting for years, I'm not exactly holding my breath on the cooperation of Kit Bond and his merry band of partisans refraining from "creating tension," which is apparently the hold up for Sen. Rockefeller, according to his spokesperson Wendy Morigi, as quoted by Froomkin.

Jack Balkin asks a few good questions of Sen. John McCain. Ones that I'd like to know the answers to as well. Because last year, McCain said this:: "All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today," Mr. Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview. Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: "They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture."...

Over at my home blog, my co-blogger MEC informs me that with the issuance of Executive Order 13457, “Protecting American Taxpayers From Government Spending on Wasteful Earmarks”, Bush has broken the law yet again and given himself a line-item veto:In effect, the Executive Order declares the Bush has the power to reject against any part of the budget passed by Congress that Bush doesn’t like:

John Dean succinctly dissects why skepticism should greet assertion of state secrets: As one commentator nicely states it, the state secrets privilege was "born with a lie on its lips." When the government says "national security," the federal courts seem to cower. Yet anyone who has worked in this area knows that seldom is nation security truly at stake when the government claims it to be.

There is a movement afoot to revise the government's ability to assert state secrets privilege as a means to shut down avenues of legal redress. Rep. Nadler held hearings on this issue last week, and it is one that has been simmering for quite some time -- mainly due to that bad taste that the Bush Administration's penchant for obeisance, ass-covering and utter silence has left in everyone's mouths. When the

There's nothing I enjoy more right now than breaking an egg into a bowl, gradually adding flour until I get a pliable mound, and then flattening the mound out with a rolling pin and flour until it's thin enough for me to cut into ribbons. A similar sense of accomplishment is achieved by working to keep Bush and Cheney from getting immunized from prosecution for their illegal wiretapping.