save lives? or protect freedoms?

* "Starlight has already helped foil some terror plots, says Jim Thomas, one of its developers and director of the government's new National Visualization Analytics Center in Richland, Wash. He can't elaborate because the cases are classified, he adds. But "there's no question that the technology we've invented here at the lab has been used to protect our freedoms - and that's pretty cool."" (link)
ummm - did it save lives? or protect freedoms? liar.

* glenn: "Alberto Gonzales diligently displayed his principal, defining attribute – a willingness to advocate each and every pro-Bush defense with a degree of blind loyalty that is staggering and, even for Washington, truly rare in its slavish purity."

* glenn: "Gonzales took that argument even one step further on Monday by claiming that even in the absence of the AUMF, Article II of the Constitution gives the President the right to employ all "incidents of war" both internationally and domestically – which means that even if Congress repealed the AUMF tomorrow, the Administration, by this view, would still have the absolute and unchecked right (under Article II) to use all war powers against American citizens. Indeed, it claims that it would have those war powers even if Congress passed a law prohibiting the exercise of those powers against Americans."
shrill.

* scott points to the bradblog/hastert post: "for some strange reason, they have decided to defend themselves - in a quite pathetic manner."

* national review (via scott): "“In between our last two posts I went to Drudge to see what was happening in the world. The lead story was about a ship disaster in the Red Sea. From the headline picture, it looked like a cruise ship. I therefore assumed that some people very much like the Americans I went cruising with last year were the victims. I went to the news story. A couple of sentences in, I learned that the ship was in fact a ferry, the victims all Egyptians. I lost interest at once, and stopped reading. I don’t care about Egyptians.”
-John Derbyshire 2/3/06"
i'm not amazed that these people actually think stuff like this - but to write it??? for no apparent reason? amazing.

* josh: "Tom DeLay lost the House leadership. But as a consolation prize they gave him NASA. Republicans leaders put DeLay on the Appropriations subcommittee in charge of the NASA budget. (The Johnson Space Center is in the bugman's district.)
There was a seat free on Appropriations because Duke Cunningham had to give up his seat.
No, you can't make this stuff up.
Oh, I forgot, his new committee controls the DOJ purse stings too"