You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude

It appears that all the celebrating regarding the administration's cave on FISA may be premature.

Ms. Wilson, who has scrutinized the program for the last year, said she believed the new approach relied on a blanket, “programmatic” approval of the president’s surveillance program, rather than approval of individual warrants.

Administration officials “have convinced a single judge in a secret session, in a nonadversarial session, to issue a court order to cover the president’s terrorism surveillance program,” Ms. Wilson said in a telephone interview. She said Congress needed to investigate further to determine how the program is run.

A blanket warrant issued to cover a program doesn't even sound remotely constitutional. Must be one of those liberal, activist judges on the FISA court that played along with the administration.

I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.

The Otter Defense didn't work on me when he and the other Delta House degenerates were here at Farver and it certainly won't work when Tony Snow tries it.

The bestial Yahoos fight for no reason all. While we on the order hand fight for very good reasons, such as, well, our enemies are weaker than us.

Kevin Drum muddled an argument yesterday regarding critics of the war and the use of preemptive force and on his attempt at clarification he doesn't do much better.

However, I also made a specific comment about preventive war: namely that the failure in Iraq doesn't especially vindicate the argument that preventive war is almost always wrong. It is almost always wrong, and the fact that Iraq was a preventive war was a good reason to oppose it. But the specific quagmire that we find ourselves in now has very little to do with the fact that the Iraq war was preventive.

I'd drop the "almost" if I was Kevin. Preventive war is always and in all cases completely wrong on every level. Moral, philosophical, tactical. You name it.

This is because defining what is to be "prevented" by a state proactively attacking another state is entirely subjective and given to interpretation. For example: there is nothing in the concept of preventive war that internally defines what the term "threat" means. It's simply assumed that a threat will be so gravely self-evident, such as Saddam's supposed WMDs, that preventive attack will be justified to the world community. But is this always the case?

India and Pakistan have shared a traditional animosity through generations which has led there own mini arms race towards becoming nuclear states. If we were to turn back the clock to a point when neither country had WMD would the shared belief each country has the other imposes a grave and impending "threat" suddenly diminish? Of course not. If each of their armed forces were made up entirely of dogs with spoons duct-taped to their heads they'd still see the existence of their neighbor as a threat to their very existence. That's because the threat concept goes beyond the physical menace imposed by the neighboring nation-state and crosses into religious and cultural concepts of threat. Subjective concepts.

Thus the very non-quantifiable nature of the "threat" makes the idea of prosecuting a war based on it's prevention obscene.

UPDATE: I see Digby hits Kevin's argument from a different angle.

Oh, no! The bad apes have the crystal lasers!

For some reason this ad reminds me of the Bush administration...

Now that Dr. King is gone, nobody left but Bobby. Nobody.

As we celebrate the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King this Monday I'd like to share one of the greatest tributes to his life provided by Bobby Kennedy at a political rally just after the news of the assasination.

Although Kazakhstan a glorious country, it have a problem, too: economic, social, and Jew.

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore," says Federal Way parent Frosty Hardison as they convinced the school board to limit showings of an "Inconvienient Truth" to the students. She's described as the "parent of seven" so obviously her problem with condoms is that she loves the soldier but hates the helmet.

FEDERAL WAY, Wash. — The school board in this suburb south of Seattle has restricted showings of Al Gore's movie on global warming, including requiring that it be balanced with an adequate opposing viewpoint.

The board also required Superintendent Tom Murphy to approve when the former vice president's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," can be presented.

The decision was sparked by complaints from parents who said their children were taking the film as fact after viewing it at school.

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven children who doesn't want the film shown at all.

"The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is," Hardison told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."

Board President Ed Barney told The News Tribune of Tacoma on Jan. 10 that he had received about a half-dozen complaints from parents.

A whole half dozen complaints? Wow. Well, by all means then accomodate the ignorant, mouth-breathing, slope-browed yahoos who think the biblical perspective of the earth burning through the end times needs to be included in a video covering a scientific theory accepted by the vast majority of climatologists worldwide.

I hope the Federal Way school board takes a massive heaping of shit for this now that it's made the national news. They deserve it. It is not the business of schools to accomodate the ignorant. Ignorance is a condition they've been specifically tasked with correcting.

Yes Saddam is very crazy, but then you are crazy for coming here.

Carl von Clausewitz famously said "War is merely a continuation of politics." I wonder if those that continue to support the war in Iraq really understand that statement. Clausewitz wasn't arguing that a state could achieve it's goals by either diplomatic or military means but not both. He was arguing precisely the opposite- that diplomacy and the use of force often overlap.

One need not look far to see examples of Iraq war supporters falling into this tiger trap of binary thinking. Just a quick perusal of the comments on Howard Kurtz's blog today provides us this specimen-

OK. democrats want us to run. What do they think is going to happen after that? How do they see the world future after that? What are they going to do when Iran finally gets nuclear weapons and starts little by little orchestrating more attacks on americans worlwide and taking control of the whole middle east oil resources? what are they going to do ? find the way to keep blaming somebody else? Eventually somebody is going to go back there and confront an enemy a thousand times more dangerous can you image the carnage? cant the Dems see that?

By bbradlee

It's an fascinating world that Mr. Bradlee lives in. A world in which the United States is either fully engaged in a regional conflict in the Middle East or apparently cowering within the confines of it's own shores, huddled under a desk waiting for the inevitable next terrorist attack. I'd love to apply such a binary dichotomy to other facets of life. For example - you are either the starting quarterback for the New England Patriots and a fine athletic specimen or a five-hundred pound couch potato that will have to be hauled out of your double-wide on a forklift after you pass away from heart disease. Varying degrees of physical fitness just don't exist.

A withdrawal of a substantial number of our forces from Iraq does not mean we've disengaged completely from the region. Nor does it mean we've simply surrendered to threat of global terrorism. Outside of the military resources we'll undoubtedly maintain within striking distance the United States has, or at least used to have, substantial influence via diplomatic and economic means. That so many on the Right can only see the greatness of the United States in terms of "blowing stuff up" is one of mysteries of our time.

My name is Serge.

Now that the President has introduced his glorious surge escalation punt plan I'd like to go on the record for the umpeenth-millionth time as saying we should get our troops the hell out of there and out of middle of the civil war Bush's ignorant stupidity facilitated.

I share the worries expressed by some that the subtext of Bush's speech last night is that we will shortly be attacking Iran, Syria or both via airstrikes. The veiled threats towards those countries and the promise of patriot missile batteries (useless against an insurgency of which mortars and IEDs pretty much top off their list of technological weapons) make it pretty clear that Bush has more than increased troop levels planned. The insurgents don't have an airplanes or missiles. The Iranians and Syrians do.

What we'll probably be seeing is a series of airstrikes against Iran and a military move against Sadr in Iraq. More of the whack-a-mole strategy this administration is so good at. I'm sure the Shiite majority in Iraq will be happy to just sit back and let this happen. Not only will we be sending more troops into Iraq, we'll be taking action to make sure their tour is infinetly more dangerous.

After watching the not-so-bright neighborhood boy repeatedly poking the beehive with a stick only to be swarmed and stung one reaches a certain point where you take that stick away.

Now you're Bantha fodder.

How could I not bring up this quote? It's not often there's a story that combines Rush Limbaugh, Star Trek and our own Congressman Wu. In fact I doubt I'll be able to type those three things again in the same sentence so I ought to strike while the anvil's hot.

In Rush's defense and as a fan of Star Trek I have to say Wu's quote is rather lame. He says that Neocons are closer to Klingons than Vulcans. That's nuts. Klingons are an honorable race. Neocons wouldn't know honor from a hole in their head.

Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about, and valiantly, he chickened out.

Brave Sir Gordo turns and runs away. What a profile in courage.

WASHINGTON -- In a Senate floor speech last month, Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith broke his long support for the Iraq war and called it "absurd." He also says he opposes President Bush's plans to increase the number of troops in Iraq.

But the Republican senator says he isn't sure how he might vote on bills to bring the troops home.