Here's a lazy quote diary to hopefully stimulate some discussion, and the importance for Europe is---no one epitomizes subservience to the Empire like Tony Blair. And now Sarko? How did this happen?

The administration has shrieked that fire will rain from the sky if the spooks are required to get a warrant- even if they still have three days to do it in- so those public-spirited folks at Comcast need a get-out-of-jail-free card.  Yet Allan Uthman at Buffal Beast comes to  the obvious conclusion: If the real issue is National Security,

Then sign the bill without the telecom amnesty provision, and work on that part later. If it's nearly as vital as Bush says, he's providing aid and comfort to the enemy by not compromising, right?

"If the Protect America Act is allowed to expire, Americans will be at risk," echoed Boehner, despite having just voted against a three-week extension on the bill, like all his fellow Republicans in the House.

What the hell is going on here? When you compare the truths of this dispute with the rhetoric from the White House and its mouthpieces, there's really no other conclusion than that this country has gone fucking bonkers. Reality and public perception don't even share a zip code anymore. After years of constant, obvious lies, their ridiculousness compounded by countless revelations of their falsehood, Bush is still sticking with the same despicable, transparently manipulative bogeyman bullshit he started with. And like-minded jackasses in the media, like Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday, still have the inconceivable gall to say things like, "I think it's kind of unbelievable, frankly, that -- it's a judgment call, we don't know -- not to give the administration the benefit of the doubt."

The benefit of the doubt? A judgment call? Sorry Bill, but fuck you. Your judgment's been shit; your President's judgment's been shit, and both of you are documented liars. So forgive the hell out of the rest of us if there's no doubt to benefit from when it comes to whether the president is a fucking fraud. The entire administration is a fraud. Every department is a fraud, staffed by fraudulent people, hostile to its stated mission and intent on its nullification, by death or paralysis. There may never be proof, especially if Bush gets his way. But what thinking person can muster much doubt that the administration is listening not just for terrorist chatter, but to anyone they want -- political enemies, reporters, chicks they're into --whoever?

In 2006, after Andrea Mitchell asked New York Times reporter James Risen, who broke the domestic spying story, out of the blue, "You don't have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?" Risen did not, but NBC scrubbed the question from its transcripts of the interview, later explaining that the story had been "released prematurely," that they had not "completed" their reporting. But they didn't call the allegation irresponsible, or speculative, or any other dismissive adjective they could have used. They essentially confirmed that they had reason to believe that Bush was secretly wiretapping a prominent CNN reporter.

And why the hell wouldn't he, after all? Without a reviewable record of warrants, it's not as if anyone can possibly find out -- unless somebody sues the telecoms, and specific, decidedly non-terrorist surveillance targets are identified in the ensuing discovery process. And that is why the Republicans are going apeshit over retroactive immunity, not just to protect the telecoms, but to cover their own asses. If it ever comes out that their secret, illegal domestic wiretaps were not targeting al Qaeda, but Al Gore, the jig is finally up. The entire "trust us, we're hunting terrorists" rationale, as thin as it always was, will lose any residual integrity, and the GOP may never recover. And they know it. And maybe, hopefully, the Democrats finally know it too.

Unfortunately, I think he has overlooked a couple things.

A source of covert information that is discovered soon dries up, and all hell breaks loose, particularly if it turns out it was illegal:

(I am updating my diary because my cat walked on the keyboard, I jerked my mouse hand and inadvertently posted it. Beats "the dog ate my homework", but only by a little).

I think the Admin. is spying on everyone -he's right there- but is very careful to never use the info in a way that would make it's source clear.

A hypothetical but obvious proposition: Assign a team to important members of congress, the press- one person to less important members, and a crew to the biggies. Suck up everything-fax, phone, e-mail, etc. and route the stuff through tame psychologists and communications specialists. Build a profile of each- fears and dreams, peccadilloes and skeletons, deeply held policy or personal beliefs, --and generate a strategy to influence these members. Not very different than the traditional methods lobbyists and the intelligence community use anyway, but with the addition of an immense treasure trove of deeply personal info, it could be devastatingly effective. You don't have to overtly blackmail them- blackmail is a very dangerous game, as Richard Nixon found out the last time this happened. All you have to do is--play them well.

Tony Blair? His actions were powerfully out of character, for the public persona that we knew before George.

Unless this persona was utterly false, someone played Tony very well.