This is pretty much what you’d expect of this administration, since this has been their pattern since day one. They drove out Gen Shinseki because he wanted more troops for the war, fired Larry Lindsay because they didn’t like the price tag he put on it, recently fired 8 US attorneys, ostensibly because they weren’t pursuing the administration’s agenda aggressively enough (coincidentally 3 or 4 were involved in active corruption probes on GOP in Congress), and fired Paul O’ Neill because he thought the tax cuts were excessive. They’ve politicized DOJ, DOD, the intelligence agencies. They’re not the first to do this, but they seem to take loyalty to the administration to an extreme.

Best to nip confusion in the bud… before things got out of hand.

The ‘illegal spying’ item is the most complicated issue for me, but I don’t share Marlow’s outrage in the least. I certainly didn’t like the administration defining what is legal without goint go Congress.

The news about judges being fired is also troublesome. The whole story has not been told, so I’m trying to hold my fire. But we should all worry if this was the administration’s way of dealing with the legality of its actions; remove judges with differing policy views.

Politicizing every Department, especially the Judiciary, is one of the very worst legacies of this presidency.

Damn you, Rudi…another link…yet more knowledge to be assimilated.

(…And how did you know about the bribes?)

…Ack, I just went there. More Ann Coulter!! I cannot go anywhere on the Net this weekend without encountering her!! Ack…ack….

Who has determined it is illegal? The New York Times, obviously.

There have been what…17 legal challenges…to the surveillance program? The program was approved by judges in all but one case: Judge Diggs Taylor’s ruling.

The New York Times editiorial page covered itself in glory when it trumpeted Taylors’ “brilliant carefully argued indictment” of the Bush administration…and then was forced to backtrack the very next day with a page 1 article in which almost every legal commentator of the left or right in the US found it a botched, embarrassing and highly partisan ruling.

The New York Times has, of course, not cited the numerous cases in which the “illegal spying” program has passed judicial review. That is irrevelant.

Whether it has assisted in catching enemies of the United States is also irrelevant.

The New York Times has declared it illegal. That is enough.

As the NYT embarrassingly revealed in their first take on Taylor’s ruling, if you attack Bush they will regard you as brilliant.

This will be dismissed (perhaps unfortunately, because some of their other points are good) as another in a long line of partisan attacks on Bush by the most partisan newspaper in the United States.