There is nothing more to be said. You either see it or you don't. You either believe that FISA undermines the Fourth Amendment and that it should be opposed or you are able to rationalize non-opposition as no big deal or, perhaps, as part of a secret plan.

But during the Fourth Amendment's short stay of execution I am doing my part for the Obama campaign.

Earlier today  Kagro X writes:

So Harold Ickes is right. This was a violation of the bedrock principle that a vote has to be counted as what it was, not what we wish, guess, or hope it was.

Kagro analogized to the distinction between courts of equity and courts at law:

What the RBC did today, it did sitting as a court of equity. But the RBC does not, ordinarily, have jurisdiction to sit as a court of equity. It sits, to complete the analogy, as a court of law.

Why that analogy and the argument fail, below.

The fraud posing as a straight talker fielded a few questions on his bus in Iowa today:

Reporter: "Should U.S. taxpayer money go to places like Africa to fund contraception to prevent AIDS?"

Mr. McCain: "Well I think it’s a combination. The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn. He believes – and I was just reading the thing he wrote– that you should do what you can to encourage abstinence where there is going to be sexual activity. Where that doesn’t succeed, than he thinks that we should employ contraceptives as well. But I agree with him that the first priority is on abstinence. I look to people like Dr. Coburn. I’m not very wise on it."

Q: "What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?"

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) "Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy."

Q: "So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?"

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) "You’ve stumped me."

George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you're stupid. Yes, they do.

They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry -- a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service -- and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.

Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, "They must think I'm stupid." Because they surely do.

More below.

The number of U.S troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could lead to civil war.

Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

October to be worse....

As Many as 60 Bodies Are Found in Baghdad

Congress Is Told of Failures of Rebuilding in Iraq

Iraqi Journalists Add Laws to List of Dangers

Iraqi Violence Is Growing, Author Says

Poll Says Most Iraqis Want U.S. Out

More below.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 -- State Department investigators have found that the head of the agency overseeing most government broadcasts to foreign countries has used his office to run a "horse racing operation" and that he improperly put a friend on the payroll, according to a summary of a report made public on Tuesday by a Democratic lawmaker.

The report said that the official, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, had repeatedly used government employees to perform personal errands and that he billed the government for more days of work than the rules permit.

It gets worse, below the fold.

Iraq at the Tipping Point  
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN (NYT)
Published: November 18, 2004

CAMP FALLUJA, Iraq - Every time I visit Iraq, I leave asking myself the same question: If you total up all the positives and negatives, where does the balance come out? I'd say the score is still 4 to 4. We can still emerge with a decent outcome. And the whole thing could still end very badly. There's only one thing one can say for sure today: you won't need to wait much longer for the tipping point.

Of course, it never tipped -- it just fell backward into a puddle of blood. But we may have reached another Iraq tipping point back home.

So there was Hillary Rodham Clinton grandstanding for the television cameras last week, giving Donald Rumsfeld a carefully scripted chewing out for his role in the Bush administration's lunatic war in Iraq.

...

Slick Willie has morphed into Slick Hilly, as the carnival of death in Iraq goes on.

Bob Herbert's complaint, below

BAGHDAD, July 31--Gunmen wearing what appeared to be the camouflaged uniforms of Iraqi soldiers descended on two commercial offices in downtown Baghdad Monday and abducted at least 21 people, including the director of an Iraqi-American trade group, according to police and witnesses.

...

The attack on Monday began after 10:00 a.m. Gunmen arrived in a convoy of SUVs at a popular shopping district of Karradah and stormed the headquarters of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They captured the chamber director Raad Omar; the head of the sales department, Majid Hameed; and the director of the maintenance department, Noman Munthir Al-Khatib, among others, according to Dowaa Mohammed, the organization's head of human resources.

In total, at least seven people, including three security guards, were kidnapped at the office, said Sarmed Saif, a Baghdad police officer who witnessed the abduction.

More mayhem, below

"It sucks. Honestly, it just feels like we're driving around waiting to get blown up. That's the most honest answer I could give you," said Spec. Tim Ivey, 28, of San Antonio, a muscular former backup fullback for Baylor University. "You lose a couple friends and it gets hard."

Army Staff Sgt. Jose Sixtos:

"Think of what you hate most about your job. Then think of doing what you hate most for five straight hours, every single day, sometimes twice a day, in 120-degree heat," he said. "Then ask how morale is."

More, below.

The administration and its allies have been mercilessly bashing Democrats who argued that the U.S. should begin developing a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces. Republicans stood up on the Senate floor last week, one after another, to chant like cultists from the Karl Rove playbook: We're tough. You're not. Cut-and-run. Nyah-nyah-nyah!

But then on Sunday we learned that the president's own point man in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, had fashioned the very thing that ol' blood-and-guts Frist and his C-Span brigade had ranted against: a withdrawal plan.

Are Karl Rove and his liege lord, the bait-and-switch king, trying to have it both ways? You bet. And that ought to be a crime, because there are real lives at stake.

More Herbert and the Democrats, below

Step One: Read his diary which contains generous, but fair,  excerpts from Rich's column.

Step Two: Read additional excerpts on the flip.

Step Three: Those who can get behind the Orange Wall email the column to your friends, representatives and local Newspaper Editor (with the request that they reprint it). If you do not have access, check truthout.org (they often post Rich's columns) or wait until tomorrow and access the column at The Progressive American.

More Rich below...

AP

With a new Iraqi government in place, Iran is positioning itself to play a major role here at a time when American influence is showing signs of faltering.
...
Concerns about Iran have simmered since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq removed a Sunni-dominated dictatorship and set the stage for democracy -- or, inevitably, Shiite rule in a country where Shiites hold an overwhelming majority.

More, below

Two years ago, as Georgia conservatives were rushing a constitutional amendment through the Legislature to define marriage and bar recognition of same-sex civil unions, they were warned repeatedly that the measure was fatally flawed, that it was so badly written that the courts would have to overrule it.
...
In fact, Bordeaux suggested, the language might be flawed on purpose, so that Georgia Republicans could twice reap the benefits of putting such a volatile issue on the ballot.
...
And thus it has come to pass.

More below.

Friday was a bad day for Senator Joseph Lieberman. The Connecticut Democratic Party's nominating convention endorsed him, but that was a given for an incumbent with a lot of political chips to cash in. The real news was that Ned Lamont, an almost unknown challenger, received a third of the votes. This gave Mr. Lamont the right to run against Mr. Lieberman in a primary, and suggests that Mr. Lamont may even win.

...

Mr. Lieberman isn't the only nationally known Democrat who still supports the Iraq war. But he isn't just an unrepentant hawk, he has joined the Bush administration by insisting on an upbeat picture of the situation in Iraq that is increasingly delusional.

Moreover, Mr. Lieberman has supported the attempt to label questions about why we invaded Iraq and criticism of the administration's policies since the invasion as unpatriotic.

More, below

"You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase."

Mallaby asks and answers the obvious question that should be on everyone's lips:

When top Republicans go around claiming that tax cuts pay for themselves, which economic authorities are they relying on? None, is the answer. These people's approach to government is to make economics up.

But it gets worse.

Bush of a Thousand Days

The demons that keep rising up from the past to grab Mr. Bush are the fictional W.M.D. he wielded to take us into Iraq. They stalk him as relentlessly as Banquo's ghost did Macbeth. From that original sin, all else flows. Mr. Rove wouldn't be in jeopardy if the White House hadn't hatched a clumsy plot to cover up its fictions. Mr. Bush's poll numbers wouldn't be in the toilet if American blood was not being spilled daily because of his fictions. By recruiting a practiced Fox News performer to better spin this history, the White House reveals that it has learned nothing. Made-for-TV propaganda propelled the Bush presidency into its quagmire in the first place. At this late date only the truth, the whole and nothing but, can set it free.

More Rich, below