They're just not like the people you value in life. They know how to accomplish things most people couldn't live with themselves for doing.

What type of public servant doesn't want the affirmation which sunshine and accountability bring?

However you answer, it applies to the present administration. Crook, demagogue, Machiavellist? Knave, villain, felon?  Molly Ivins used to say they were too rich to go to jail - this Bush bunch.

Because the A.C.L.U. was found not to have standing, because it could not prove specific details of injuries from violations of the F.I.S.A. process, the sixth circuit reversed a lower court's ruling.

In other words, because any violations would be forever known only to the perpetrators if they maintained secrecy, as if Joseph Heller needed another plug for Catch-22, nobody can say with any certainty that they definitively were harmed.

Courts may go only so far with government secrets. Those rules work best when the spirit of the government is openness with the sparing use of secrecy. In this decision, discovering the vagaries of a government wiretap program are subordinate to an esoteric sine qua non.

Perhaps we're not used to justice being taken to the same bureaucratic extremes as having been in the wrong line for five hours at the D.M.V. What are you going to do?

When Americans discuss their tolerance for secrecy, they haven't a clue what secrets are being kept from them, now do they?

The government hasn't defended its program on the merits, says Glenn Greenwald at Salon, "because they did not make any such arguments. They refused to do so, because -- as always -- their only objective is to block judicial rulings on the legality of their behavior, not to defend what they have done."

Bear that in mind when some Hyperventilage Foundation cranks out bogus constitutional arguments for secret wiretapping.

Rather than we blame the law, the slippery slope to beat all, one could fairly ask whose mind works as if some of America's darkest history must be revisited with bulleted lists of mistakes not to make next time? (Memo to evil self: no recording systems in the Oval Office!)

Frank Rich explored the creation of vice-presidential, co-equal powers over secrets in a presidential order from March, 2003. "Another half-century could pass before Americans learn the full story of the secrets buried by Mr. Cheney and his boss to cover up their deceitful path to war."

In that vein, Monday's Libby commutation was rub your evil hands together nefarious, in that discovery in the Plame/Wilson civil suit and congressional oversight hearings will stay hampered by the excuse that there are remaining appeals. It's not just about dubious assertions of executive privilege.

“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Mr. Bush said in a statement. If that were true, then he had just confessed to being part of a wider conspiracy to obstruct justice. But that is only the logical perspective.

Don't underestimate the power of the non-stop grinding spin. There's an 'is not' for every 'is too' you can think of.

To read Rich using words from a bygone era for Bush in the Judith Miller affair and assorted other shenanigans (er, declassifications) should send one back in time. "The president could have plausible deniability and was free to deliver non-denial denials like 'If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.' Mr. Cheney in turn could delegate the actual dirty work to Mr. Libby, who obstructed justice to help throw a smoke screen over the vice president's own role in the effort to destroy Mr. Wilson."

And Dubbya says he won't rule out a full pardon for Scooter. When will our representatives find the cojones just to have that constitutional crisis?

We get one glorious vote every so often but Congress has the power to say "oh no you don't! Not after a six year free ride."