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Via Daily Kos:

Via Crooks and Liars, this report from Bloomberg News:

The United States is tracking a North Korean ship described as suspicious by a U.S. official, Agence France-Presse reported from Washington.

The vessel left a North Korean port and may be carrying military equipment banned under UN sanctions imposed after North Korea carried out a nuclear test on Oct. 9., AFP said, citing a CBS News report.

It doesn’t matter whether there’s any banned material on board. If we can just get some sort of exchange of shots, Karl Rove has his October Surprise.

The Washington Post reports the beginning of the end of law:

Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

In a notice dated Wednesday, the Justice Department listed 196 pending habeas cases, some of which cover groups of detainees. The new Military Commissions Act (MCA), it said, provides that “no court, justice, or judge” can consider those petitions or other actions related to treatment or imprisonment filed by anyone designated as an enemy combatant, now or in the future.

“No court, justice or judge” can check the president’s absolute power.

Some time ago, I said the Bush Administration wants to roll back not just the New Deal, but the Magna Carta. Now, with the indispensable help of the rubber-stamp Republican Congress, they’ve done it.

Does this remind you of anybody? (Don’t let the fact she’s reading a book throw you.)

A reader at Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo:

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were in the front seat.

They drove the Iraq car off a cliff.

Then they turned to the Dems in the back seat.

And said the Dems couldn’t complain unless they could come up with a plan of their own.

The tragedy is that there is no rational hope for a plan (any plan) that will work well. When you’ve driven the car off the cliff, your range of options is quite limited. We’re in the hands of gravity at this point.

Gravity will do what gravity will do. Seat belts fastened?

The most important thing now is to keep Bush and Co. from driving over any additional cliffs.

I don’t usually watch Jay Leno’s Tonight show, so I’m glad Crooks and Liars linked to a version of this video. That’s what inspired me to go find this one. NBC News White House correspondent David Gregory:

Via Daily Kos, a Missouri Senate campaign ad, featuring Michael J. Fox on stem cell research:

Fox is suffering from Parkinson’s Disease.

One congressman imitates the Saturday Night Massacre and fires investigators looking into ethics issues. Now, via Crooks and Liars, we learn that another is compiling his own enemies list:

E-mails received by CREW [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington] have prompted us to ask the Department of Justice to investigate whether Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) violated the law by intimidating government personnel “in the national security field” who support his opponent, Joe Sestak.

The first e-mail describes a “hit list” compiled of Weldon opponent’s supporters. In addition, that e-mail notes the Weldon said something to the effect of “If they don’t think there will be retribution before or after the election, they’re kidding themselves.” The second e-mail states that Weldon had his staff contact Navy personnel to get information on Sestak.

Nixon is not the best role model, guys.

According the Census Bureau estimates, the U.S. population hit 300 million on Tuesday.

Good thing, too. We need as many people as we can get to share the cost of this administration’s war in Iraq.

Let’s see — so far it’s cost 2,788 U.S. lives, but, hey — there’s plenty more where they came from, right?

In dollars, the bill runs about $300 billon. Now, if we all chip in, that’s only $1,000 from each and every man, woman and child in the U.S. right now.

Oops — too late. Make that $1,100. No, make it $1,110. Uh…

More people! Quick! We need more people!

Via Crooks and Liars, the San Diego Union-Tribune has a story of bread lines on U.S. military bases:

The women and children who formed a line at Camp Pendleton last week could have been waiting for a child-care center to open or Disney on Ice tickets to go on sale.

Instead, they were waiting for day-old bread and frozen dinners packaged in slightly damaged boxes. These families are among a growing number of military households in San Diego County that regularly rely on donated food.

As the Iraq war marches toward its fourth anniversary, food lines operated by churches and other nonprofit groups are an increasingly valuable presence on military bases countywide. Leaders of the charitable groups say they’re scrambling to fill a need not seen since World War II.

Too often, the supplies run out before the lines do, said Regina Hunter, who coordinates food distribution at one Camp Pendleton site.

“Here they are defending the country. . . . It is heartbreaking to see,” said Hunter, manager of the on-base Abby Reinke Community Center. “If we could find more sources of food, we would open the program up to more people. We believe anyone who stands in a line for food needs it and deserves it.”

There is something really, really wrong with this country right now.

The Bush Administration and the rubber-stamp Republicans in Congress make a lot of noise about supporting our troops, but it’s just that — just noise.

You can bet that no millionaire has had to wait in a long line for his fat tax cuts. No oil executive has had to wait long for his next subsidy. The GOP knows how to Support Our Millionaires.

It’s time for a change, by God. It’s time for a change.

It was thirty-three years ago today that the “Saturday Night Massacre” happened.

The Watergate scandal had been growing for more than a year, and independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox was getting too close for comfort. Richard Nixon wanted Cox fired.

Attorney General Elliot Richardson wouldn’t do it, so Nixon fired him.

Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus wouldn’t fire Cox, either, so Nixon fired him, too.

Finally Nixon found a man with no such scruples about the rule of law, Solicitor General Robert Bork, who fired Cox and had Cox’s staff locked out of their offices.

But firing Cox didn’t end Nixon’s troubles. For the first time, the talk of impeachment in Washington was deadly serious. For Nixon, the Saturday Night Massacre was like O.J. Simpson’s televised “Bronco chase” — people who had believed in Nixon’s innocence wondered why an innocent man would act so guilty.

History repeats. From TPMmuckraker:

House Appropriations chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) is under federal investigation for possible improprieties in how he oversaw Congress’ spending of $900 billion annually…

This evening, Congressional Quarterly reports that in a round of calls Monday evening, Lewis fired 60 investigators who had worked for his committee rooting out fraud, waste and abuse, effective immediately. As in, don’t bother coming in on Tuesday.

More evidence this is the Worst Congress Ever.

The War of the Words is an online mockumentary that tells “The Story of the 101^st Fighting Keyboarders,” in the style of Ken Burns’ documentary of the Civil War. (Warning: strong language.)

They came from across America. Theirs is a story of courage, determination, and, above all, typing. They were the conservative bloggers, pundits and commentators, whose loud and prolific support of Republican foreign policy goals helped change the course of history in ways that would be felt for many years to come. They are the men and women — mostly men, though — who would come to be known as the 101st Fighting Keyboarders. This is their story.

I’m thinking most of the people immortalized here would rather have obscurity.

If there’s anything John McCain hates, it’s a Democratic Senate:

Arizona Sen. John McCain, a likely Republican presidential contender in 2008, joked on Wednesday he would “commit suicide” if Democrats win the Senate in November.

Then the Democrats would have an even bigger majority! John, have you thought this thing through?

Oh, right. Republicans don’t do that.

Maryland Republicans get the vapors:

Maryland Republicans decried as “racist” a Democratic congressman’s comment that lieutenant governor and Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele “slavishly” supports the GOP.

Steele, a former chairman of the state Republican Party, is black.

Aw, baloney!

This country is infested with a class of active offense-takers.

It used to be that you’d see them mostly in the Letters to the Editor column in your local newspaper. They were people who combed the paper every day, looking for some word or phrase to which they could take offense, so they could write a letter to the editor and maybe get their name and their favorite rant in the paper. Some fun.

Now professional politicians have gotten into the game, acting like some Victorian lady who faints at the sight of an exposed piano leg — sorry, limb. And it’s all a crock of — uh — manure.

“Slavishly” is a perfectly good adverb to describe the way a politician might support every edict handed down from on high by his party’s political bosses. Whether it is a fair characterization of Michael Steele’s career, I don’t know.

Well, actually, I can make a pretty good guess. Considering how the Republicans started shrieking and swooning and taking offense in order to change the subject, I’m betting that the remark pretty much hit the nail on the head.

I’ve complained before about Keith Olbermann’s over-indulgence in “special comments,” but this one is good. From Countdown, Keith Olbermann on the Military Commission Act:

[T]onight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

We have been here before — and we have been here before led here — by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.

We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use those acts to jail newspaper editors.

American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote about America.

We have been here when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as “Hyphenated Americans,” most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.

American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said about America.

And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9066 was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that order to imprison and pauperize 110,000 Americans while his man in charge, General DeWitt, told Congress: “It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen — he is still a Japanese.”

American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did, but for the choices they or their ancestors had made about coming to America.

Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And each was a betrayal of that for which the president who advocated them claimed to be fighting.

…

We have let Roosevelt’s “fear of fear itself” overtake us.

We have listened to the little voice inside that has said, “the wolf is at the door; this will be temporary; this will be precise; this too shall pass.”

We have accepted that the only way to stop the terrorists is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists.

…

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And, always, always wrong.

…

This President now has his blank check.

He lied to get it.

He lied as he received it.

Is there any reason to even hope he has not lied about how he intends to use it nor who he intends to use it against?

Video and the complete transcript are at MSNBC.