potential war-criminals

* jeralyn:

"The Senate Armed Services and Judiciary Committees began consideration today of Bush's latest proposal for trying detainees. It's a sandbag, as worse if not worse than the plan thrown out by the Supreme Court in June."

* stoller via fdl:

"…After all the politicos had spoken, Lieberman finally stepped up to the mike. Lieberman’s speech was bad, weird, listless, and angry. He said that there are two big lies in this campaign. The first is apparently that Lieberman is not a Democrat. For the record, we call him George Bush’s favorite Democrat, though we tend to acknowledge that he’s a Democrat. After repeating the the mean liberal voices he hears in his head, Lieberman said something along the lines of ‘I’m a Democrat, I believe in human rights, in government working for the people, etc.’ What’s hilarious about Lieberman’s point is that he not only violated campaign speak 101, which is that you don’t repeat your opponent’s attacks on you, but he actually invented a new attack line and used it on himself so he could deny it."

as i've said before, that was the weirdest thing about the NoMoreJoe bumper stickers. i'm still amazed by that one (even if they had been actualy lamont material).

* froomkin:

"Well, judging from the recent outpouring of editorials at small- and medium-sized newspapers across the country, there may be something about violating the Constitution that riles up Americans no matter where they live or where they stand on the political spectrum.

Bush's use of signing statements finally -- and briefly -- made the headlines last week, when a bipartisan American Bar Association task force dramatically established how the president's assertion of his right to ignore certain statutes passed by Congress undermines the rule of law and the constitutional system of separation of powers."

* froomkin, live:

" Actually, it would seem to me that all the potential war-criminals out there are safe until 2008 at the very earliest, regardless of who takes Congress. After all, it would be Bush's Justice Department that does the prosecuting."

* froomkin, live:

"And you have no idea how dramatically Bush has re-engineered government.

I mean that literally. You have no idea, because it's one of the great unreported Washington stories. No, he hasn't made government more efficient, suddenly -- but he has, for instance, put dramatically unqualified political appointees in all sorts of key positions all over the government, with bold and unprecedented marching orders to hire like-minded people."

snarkalicious.