punishing Holocaust denial

* xymphora: " The argument in favor of punishing Holocaust denial is even sillier than Holocaust denial itself. No one can really believe that David Irving's views are going to prevail, a fact clearly demonstrated by the universal reaction to him. "

* clemons: "The reality though -- hard as it is to admit -- is that Vice President Cheney shrugged off the Libby indictment in a few weeks and has roared back to a robust role in national security affairs and is now trying to strangle Condoleezza Rice's foreign policy agenda.
Addington's rise and those of his acolytes -- have given the neoconservative agenda some new faces, lesser known, but in many ways far more insidious."

* blumenthal: "Bush operates on the radical notion of the "unitary executive," that the president has inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances. By his extraordinary order, he elevated Cheney to his level, an acknowledgment that the vice president was already the de facto executive in national security. Never before has any president diminished and divided his power in this manner. Now the unitary executive inherently includes the unitary vice president."

* speaking of Robert Wright and wiretaps, this from 2002:

"(Special Agent) Wright points to recent misconduct and falsifications of wiretap warrant applications by FBI agents (signed-off by the former FBI Director, Louis Freeh) to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. Prior to September 11th, SA Wright alleged FBI intelligence agents lied and hid vital records from criminal agents for the purpose of obstructing his criminal investigation of the terrorists in order to protect their “subjects,” and prolong their intelligence operations. SA Wright was stunned to learn recently that some of the FBI intelligence agents that had stalled and obstructed his criminal investigations of terrorists in Chicago had also lied to the judges of the FISA Court in Washington, DC."

FISA is notoriously compliant - why would they falsify the applications? the interesting thing is that Wright appears to make these claims in the context of obstructing investigations, not facilitating them.