The Cards are on the Table

Via firedoglake, Greenwald does a good breakdown of Al Gore's NSA speech. Glenn Greenwald says:

(1) It is past time for Democrats to dispense with the tepid, half-hearted, non-committal language when talking to Americans about why this scandal is so serious...

"...At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

"Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is "yes" then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do?"

Win a war? But I digress. Glenn Greenwald says:

(2) For reasons I explained in this post today, the NSA scandal is not a partisan or ideological scandal and must not be depicted that way. There is nothing in either liberal or conservative ideology which remotely promotes or endorses the notion that the President has the right to break the law. This scandal transcends the standard liberal-conservative battles because it threatens the basic principles of our government...

Bush followers are not conservative; they are devoted solely to the aggrandizement and glorification of George Bush. It is more of a personality cult than it is a political ideology. There is a strong anti-government sentiment which still runs deep in traditional conservatives – that is why Bob Barr and so many other actual conservatives have spoken out, in many cases more aggressively than Democrats have, against Bush’s lawless eavesdropping...

Good thing, too. It'd about time conservatives put away the Kool-Aid. Followers of Dear Leader have a lot more in common with followers of Sun-Myung Moon than followers of an Abraham Lincoln or a Dwight Eisenhower.

(3) Gore called for several specific actions to be taken in response to this scandal – including the appointment of a Pat Fitzgerald-like Special Prosecutor and the holding of comprehensive and serious hearings (not the worthless show trial planned by the impotent Senate Judiciary Committee and the neutered Arlen Specter)...

The mudslinging's started at any rate.

Great smackdowns of Abu Gonzales here and here. Read the comments.