Non-baseball fans might be surprised to know there was a pitcher by the name of Gaylord Perry. That was not his nickname; his mother named him Gaylord. In protest, Gaylord threw spitballs over the course of his successful career as a professional ballplayer, flummoxing opposing batters by essentially changing the physics of the baseball with saliva, Vaseline and anything else that would make the perfectly round ball jump and curve on its way to the batter, only 60 feet away. At least that's what Wikipedia tells us: "Such a pitch presents an additional challenge to the hitter because it causes the ball to move atypically during its approach due to the altered wind-resistance and weight on one side of the ball."

The problem with Gaylord Perry was not his name; it was the spitballs. Major League Baseball made them illegal in 1920 because they gave pitchers an unfair advantage over the hitters. Gaylord was crafty. He "would sniff red peppers to make his nose run or he would put vaseline on his zipper because umpires would never check there." This means he was really throwing a snotball. Hey, whatever works.

Gaylord Perry was so brazen in throwing an illegal pitch that he named his autobiography "Me and the Spitter." Despite this admission that Gaylord was throwing spitballs from the late 1950's through the early 1980's, he was elected to the Hall of Fame. He got away with breaking the rules, despite (and maybe because of) his brazenness and colorful name.

The most famous cheater in baseball history is about to pass the torch to another high-profile cheater, Barry Bonds, who is about to set the all-time record for career homeruns. All but the most partisan fans believe that Barry is reaching this milestone with the help of steroids, which turn easy fly balls into mammoth homeruns. Barry will pay for this. No one wants to see the coveted home run record tarnished by a cheater. When Barry finds himself on the outside of the Hall of Fame looking in, he's going to ask, "What about Gaylord Perry." It's a good question.

I think about Gaylord and Barry when I read daily in the newspapers about our horrible world and how we got there. It seems clear that George W. Bush is going to slag his way to the end of his second term without any impeachment effort by the Democratic Party, which seized control of Congress in 2006 because of widespread disdain for Bush and general agreement among all but the most fanatical Republicans that Bush is a failure who launched a bogus war that has killed many innocents, and violated several elementary principles of Amerian constitutional law, not to mention international law, such as the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, torture and the suspension of habeas corpus. Is it because we lack the stomach for impeachment proceedings? Is it because Bush has impeachment insurance in the form of Dick Cheney? How about double impeachment proceedings?

Bush has been throwing spitballs at the American public since January 20, 2001, the day he took the oath of office. After 9/11, Bush began injecting steroids into his buttocks, scaring the crap out of the American public with tough talk on terror and a shrewd public relations strategy focused on his steely determination in the face of unspeakable horror.

But like a criminal who left his wallet at the scene of the crime, Bush has been exposed many times as a total fraud.

Tough on bin Ladin? Bullshit. According to this morning's New York Times, "A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials. The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations. But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning."

Rebuilding Iraq and making the Middle East safe for democracy? Bullshit. Associated Press reports that violence and death rages on in Iraq. Blame for this horrible scenario lies almost entirely at the feet of George W. Bush.

Prominent Shiite and Sunni politicians called on Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves after a weekend of violence that claimed more than 220 lives, including 60 who died Sunday in a surge of bombings and shootings around Baghdad.

The calls reflect growing frustration with the inability of Iraqi security forces to prevent extremist attacks.

The weekend deaths included two American soldiers — one killed Sunday in a bombing on the western outskirts and Baghdad and another who died in combat Saturday in Salahuddin province north of the capital, the U.S. command said. Three soldiers were wounded in the Sunday blast.

Sunday's deadliest attack occurred when a bomb struck a truckload of newly recruited Iraqi soldiers on the outskirts of Baghdad, killing 15 soldiers and wounding 20, a police official at the nearest police station said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Surrounds himself with intelligent and wise advisors? Bullshit. According to this weekend's London Times, Bush ignored Secretary of State Colin Powell who begged Bush not to start the Iraq War:

The former American secretary of state Colin Powell has revealed that he spent 2½ hours vainly trying to persuade President George W Bush not to invade Iraq and believes today’s conflict cannot be resolved by US forces.

“I tried to avoid this war,” Powell said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. “I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers.”

Powell has become increasingly outspoken about the level of violence in Iraq, which he believes is in a state of civil war. “The civil war will ultimately be resolved by a test of arms,” he said. “It’s not going to be pretty to watch, but I don’t know any way to avoid it. It is happening now.”

Powell was eventually pushed out of the Bush administration, presumably for asking too many questions. I want a tape recording of that conversation between Powell and Bush. For Powell, it was probably like talking to a wall. "I want war," Bush probably said. "But Mr. President, it won't work. You'll make things worse," Powell said. "I want war," Bush probably responded. "Please listen to me. You'll trigger a civil war. We'll be there for years," Powell cried out. "I want war," Bush said as he shooed Powell out of the Oval Office.

The Iraq war is the biggest spitball of them all. Colin Powell will tell you that. It was he who destroyed his reputation as America's sage military general when he hurled spitball after spitball at the United Nations in February 2003, trying to show the world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Powell's obituary will almost certainly highlight that sorry episode at least by the fifth paragraph. Throwing spitballs is fun, at least until you get caught. It's even worse when you throw them on someone else's behalf and get caught. Sort of like the getaway driver after a bank heist getting 20 years in the slammer and the triggerman retiring in the Cayman Islands.

A good place to look in you want to keep track of the latest Bush administration scandals and outrages is TPM Muckraker. Today's entry is unique in that I don't recall any prior administration politicizing the position of Surgeon General quite like this.

Yesterday, Richard H. Carmona, U.S. surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about the Bush-inflicted horrors he experienced during his tenure. Some of Carmona's experience will be familiar to administration-watchers, like a dismissal of global warming as "a liberal cause" by senior officials. Health and Human Services cronies struck references to stem-cell research from his speeches while instructing him to mention President Bush three times on every page. Come election time, the nation's doctor was to prescribe voting for the GOP ticket.

Other aspects are more inventive, even for President Bush. Consider the case of the Special Olympics:

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.

The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people, and the Kennedys have long been deeply involved in it.

When asked after the hearing if that “prominent family” was the Kennedys, Dr. Carmona responded, “You said it. I didn’t.”

Nearly six years after September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda is as strong as it was in summer 2001, when George W. Bush was handed a red-alert memo on his ranch at Crawford, Texas, advising that the terror group was planning an immediate attack inside the United States. At the time, President Ding-Dong told his advisor, "You've covered your ass, now."

The story about Bush blowing off a CIA operative delivering the bad news was broken in Ron Suskind's book, The One Percent Doctrine.

In the book, Suskind fleshed out some details regarding Bush's receipt of the now-famous August 6, 2001, memo headlined "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Specifically, he reported that the "analytical arm of CIA was in kind of a panic mode" during that month and CIA officials "flew to Crawford [Texas] to personally brief the President -- to intrude on his vacation with face-to-face alerts." At the end of one such briefing, Bush reportedly responded to the CIA briefer, "All right ... You've covered your ass, now." (Pages 1-2)

Bush ran for re-election in 2004 on the strength of his anti-terror efforts, positioning himself as the only guy in the race who could prevent another attack. The problem was that the troops that could have squashed al-Qaeda were in Iraq, fulfilling Ding-Dong's dream of being a successful war president. He is neither.

Some people wouldn't mind another terrorist attack. "About a month ago, Dennis Milligan, the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, sounded pretty excited about the prospect of domestic terrorism. 'At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country,' Milligan said."

At a news conference today, Bush spun a folksy recap of his career: "And so, when it's all said and done, if you ever come down and visit the old, tired me down there in Crawford, (Texas), I will be able to say I looked in the mirror and made decisions based upon principle, not based upon politics. And that's important to me." Actually, he'll be remembered the same way that we remember the guy who accidently burned the house down.

We already know from our own intelligence agencies that the Iraq War has increased the terror threat. They hated us in 2001. They hate us even more today. It's only a matter of time before they attack us again. We are standing in the wreckage of a political system that has failed us in every way. At the top is a Ding-Dong who never should have been elected or even nominated by his party in the first place. Where is Congress? Why aren't there hearings on the Administration's failure to keep us safe? Living in the shadow of 9/11, as most New Yorkers are, I dread another attack. It will happen because we did exactly the opposite in preventing another 9/11. There is nothing more important than this. If this is not grounds for impeachment, then nothing is.

I remember the Iran-contra hearings from 1987 like they happened only a few years ago. The Reagan administration was reeling from relevations that it sent weapons to the Iranians (who were supposed to be our enemy) and then diverting the profits to finance the contras in Nicaragua. Both endeavors violated U.S. law. The administration was not allowed to help a renegade army try to overthrow an elected government in Nicaragua and it certainly was not allowed to send weapons to terrorists.

What Iran-contra did was expose Ronald Reagan as a figurehead. His strategy early on when the scandal broke was to say he did not know about these covert schemes and that his subordinates were doing it behind his back. This raised the great Catch-22. If Reagan knew about this stuff, he was flagrently violating American law, an impeachable offense. If he did not know, then he was out of touch and not truly exercising his authority. We all suspected that, at best, Reagan was asleep at the switch, but either way, the scandal blemished an administration that deserved the bad publicity, frankly.

A few juicy issues surfaced when Congress investigated the scandal in summer 1987. Didn't Congress pass a law that prohibited our government from sending money to the contras in Central America? And why were we playing footsie with the Iranians, who were holding Americans hostage? It turned out that Reagan et al were sending Iran weapons as ransom for the hostages.

But more important issues were overlooked during the hearings. For starters, the contras were a CIA creation, terrorizing Central American peasants and trying to destroy a political system in Nicaragua, which was none of our business. Human rights organizations were up in arms over the contras' terrorism and indiscriminate killings.

But, even more wild than the contra issue was news that members of the Reagan administration had drawn up a plan to suspend the U.S. Constitution in the event of an emergency. Who authorized this? Apparantly it was one of Oliver North's shenanigans, one of the star witnesses at the hearings. I am indebted to the great cartoonist, Tom Tomorrow, for the following recap:

It was twenty years ago today that this peculiar exchange took place during the nationally televised Iran Contra hearings:

REP. BROOKS: Colonel North, in your work at the [National Security Council], were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the “continuity of government” in the event of a major disaster?

SEN. INOUYE: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch on that, sir?

REP. BROOKS: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.

SEN. INOUYE: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I’m certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.

So one U.S. Senator wanted to question witnesses about this plan. But another wouldn't let him do it. This is one of the great forgotten moments in American history. Someone was about to blow the lid of an authoritarian plan to suspend the Constitution and potentially turn this country into a police state. But the story was kept under wraps.

Another blogger was kind enough to reprint the news article that Senator Brooks was referring to about shutting down the Constitution:

Some of President Reagan's top advisers have operated a virtual parallel government outside the traditional Cabinet departments and agencies almost from the day Reagan took office, congressional investigators and administration officials have concluded. Investigators believe that the advisers' activities extended well beyond the secret arms sales to Iran and aid to the contras now under investigation.

Lt. Col. Oliver North, for example, helped draw up a controversial plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad.

The rest of that article reads:

There appears to have been no formal directive for the advisers' activities, which knowledgeable sources described as a parallel government.

In a secret assessment of the activities, the lead counsel for the Senate Iran-contra committee called it a "secret government-within-a-government."

The arrangement permitted Reagan administration officials to claim that they were not involved in controversial or illegal activities, the officials said.

"It was the ultimate plausible deniability," said a well-briefed official who has served the Reagan administration since 1982 and who often collaborated on covert assistance to the Nicaraguan contras.

There you have it. A parallel government? Yes, a parallel government! The Reagan administration had plans to suspend the U.S. Constitution in the event of an unpopular U.S. war abroad. The guy who helped draw up that plan, by the way, was Oliver North, today a prominent Fox News commentator. Imagine what that plan would look like today during the Iraq War, which most of the country now opposes. Some of our countrymen oppose the war quite strongly. Could it happen here? Yeah, it could.

There is an authoritarian strain in every government, ours included. Reagan's henchmen were ideologues who supported military dictatorships and illegal interventions abroad and lied about it daily. Then then attacked domestic critics who asked too many questions about American foreign policy. Sound familiar? The Bush administration does the same thing. One of the strongest supporters of the Reagan administration's shifty foreign initiatives during the 1980's was Dick Cheney, then a Congressman from Wyoming. Today (as Vice President) he practices the same authoritarian rituals on behalf of President Dingbat. A good article linking the Cheney of yesterday to the Cheney of today is here.

Present-day liberals and even radicals may criticize George W. Bush over his anti-democratic and authoritarian ways. But these practices go back decades, including the 1980's, when another dingbat, Ronald Reagan, also let the animals take over the asylum. We learned nothing from those days. And, if I'm a betting man, I would say that 20 years from now we'll hear that we learned nothing from the horrible days of George W. Bush.

This country marched towards freedom during the 1960's, not only through civil rights and anti-war protests but court decisions that breathed life into the Bill of Rights, which include the First Amendment. We don't hear about it much these days in everyday discussion, but things took a turn for the better on March 9, 1964, when the Supreme Court of the United States made it nearly impossible for public officials to sue citizens for public speech criticizing them by name.

In a nutshell, the Court in New York Times v. Sullivan ruled that, even if the critic gets his facts wrong in criticizing a governmental official, he cannot be sued by that official unless he spoke with malice. Negligently or mistakenly getting your facts wrong will not get you sued by a public official. Only malicious statements will. But malice is extremely difficult to prove, so for the most part, most government officials would not bother with any defamation lawsuit. Nothing would shut up even the biggest loudmouth if he thought he might get sued by a Congressman for provocative public speech.

New York Times v. Sullivan changed everything. Probably every blog and political commentator in the country owes a debt the Supreme Court for that ruling. If that's the case, send a check to the estate of the late Justice William Brennan, who wrote the opinion and stated that political debate in this country had to be robust for a democratic society to flourish. Here are Brennan's famous words on the subject: "We consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." We have not always lived up to Brennan's counsel that free speech be fearless and robust, but it's an excellent value to strive for.

Supreme Court decisions have the force of law, and for the most part, Congress cannot overturn them. But the Supreme Court can overturn its prior rulings, as we hear ad nauseum every time another potential Court nominee is bombarded with questions about whether he'd overturn Roe v. Wade, which recognized a constitutional right to abortion. But would anyone ask a Supreme Court nominee whether she'd overturn New York Times v. Sullivan? I don't think the question has ever been asked.

In a little noticed comment in a book about government news sources, Justice Scalia -- a sitting Supreme Court Justice -- suggested that he would overturn New York Times v. Sullivan if given the opportunity. We know this thanks to the astute observations of Dahlia Lithwick of Slate.com, who writes:

on Page 77 of Norman Pearlstine's new book about anonymous sources, Off the Record. . . . Pearlstine lays out the long American tradition of the free press and then—smack in the middle of discussing the landmark libel ruling of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan—he tosses in quite a parenthetical. He notes that "(In an interview, Justice Antonin Scalia told me that given the chance, he would probably vote to reverse New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.)"

This should be big news, but it isn't. The loudest critics of American government probably never heard of New York Times v. Sullivan, even though it lets them say whatever they want without being sued for defamation.

So what is Justice Scalia's problem with New York Times v. Sullivan? He was quoted a few years ago saying that

"The press is the only business that is not held responsible for its negligence." Scalia also noted that he had great difficulty believing that public people should have such problems protecting their reputations.

The average public official does not have to worry about her reputation. The average citizen, in contrast, will think twice before criticizing your typical politician out of fear of being sued. Any negative reputational consequences that result from a few misguided statements about a public official are certainly outweighed by the social benefits of robust free speech. Why doesn't a Supreme Court Justice like Scalia recognize this? What if he gets his way and overturns New York Times v. Sullivan?

We love analyzing lies because the lies tell us so much. If you lie, we assume you did it maliciously. Nobody mistakenly lies; they do it on purpose. And that's worse than any mistake.

The issues that arise when a President lies make the inquiry more complicated than it should be. This started with Watergate. For those of you who cut class in high school social students (or are too young to remember), Watergate was about President Nixon's cover-up a political crime in which his flunkies broke into the Democratic Party's headquarters (at the Watergate hotel) and snooped around for secret information. The focus was Nixon's malicious failure to tell the truth. When Congress investigated Watergate, the famous question was "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" This places the focus on a smoking gun, which rarely exists.

That question may have been useful for solving the Watergate scandal, but it's failed us ever since. Watergate was about Nixon and his dark refusal to play by the rules. Other political scandals, like Iran-contra in the 1980's and the manipulation of Iraq war intelligence, also focused on the President's lies, but that missed the point, which is why President Reagan (Iran-contra) and President Bush (Iraq WMD's) got away with murder, perhaps literally. When the scandals involve failures of a presidential administration as opposed to a President's self-destructive antics (like Nixon during Watergate or Bill Clinton during the Monica sex scandal) then we should presume the President is personally responsible for the crimes of his administration. By asking what the President knew and when he knew it, we allow the Presidents to blame their minions and to play dumb in the face of rampant lawlessness.

As we we slog through the fifth year of the Iraq war, we should think about this. Investigative journalists have been trying to show that George W. Bush personally threw caution to the wind in waging war, and there's some good evidence in support of that thesis. But there's compelling evidence that the administration is corrupt and manipulated the pre-war intelligence. Bush did not reign in anyone with respect to these shenanigans, and in my view that makes him as guilty as the minions who shredded the evidence in opposition to the war.

The latest news about the manipulation of pre-war intellegence comes from the Washington Post, which reports in the course of a book review that "shortly before accepting the job of director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell seemed to side with those who believe that the administration manipulated intelligence on Iraq for political purposes before the 2003 invasion."

On Meet the Press this weekend, McConnell elaborated: "“My sense of it is their political faith and convictions influenced how they took information and interpreted [it], how they picked up and interpreted outside events. … I’ve read much more about the current set of players and they did set up a whole new interpretation because they didn’t like the answers. They’ve gotten results that in my view now have been disastrous,” [McConnell said].

Bush will get away with this because no one this time said it was Bush who manipulated the intelligence. Any smoking gun on the war has long since been thrown away or eaten. The question that no one is asking is did George W. Bush reprimand anyone or take steps to repudiate the guys and gals who manipulated the intelligence. It's doubtful that he did. That makes Bush as guilty as the manipulators. He is on the hook for the corruption of his administration. And that is the way we should view scandals.

The White House issued an Executive Order on July 17 which makes it illegal for American citizens to engage in certain activities with respect to the Iraq war. If you violate the order, your assets can be freezed by the government. The Order allows this punishment of:

Any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense . . . to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order." This includes (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person."

In other words, your assets will be frozen if a Bush administration official decides that you provided financial support to anyone deemed the enemy in Iraq. Under the unofficial laws of war, anyone can be the enemy in Iraq. Under the slippery legal theories practiced by the Bush administration, anti-war activists can be swept in this net. Does this Executive Order criminalize anti-war dissent? People are asking questions, but not enough people. We are still transfixed by Lindsay Lohan.

This Executive Order coincides with an interesting column by Alexander Cockburn in this week's Nation magazine. Cockburn reminds us that in the 1980's, organizations opposed to the aggressive American foreign policy in Central America adopted "sister cities" and provided support to the beleagured peasants who suffered tremendously under President Reagan's horrific foreign policy in that corner of the world. He wonders why anti-war activists are not sympathizing with the Iraqi resistance.

"But, of course, if you are going to sympathize with the U.S. soldiers, who are fighting a war of aggression, than surely you should also sympathize with the soldiers who are fighting for their homeland. Perhaps not until the antiwar movement starts to some degree recognizing that they should include 'the Iraqi resistance fighters' in their pantheon of victims (in addition to U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians) will there be the necessary critical mass to have a real movement."

Now there are many obvious reasons why the direct solidarity with resistance fighters visible in the Vietnam antiwar struggle and the Central American anti-intervention movement has not been visible in the movement opposing the Iraq war. The "War on Terror" means — and was designed to mean — that any group in the United States with detectable ties or relations with Iraqi resistance movements would be in line for savage legal reprisals under the terms of the Patriot Act. Another important factor: The contours of the Iraqi resistance are murky and in some aspects unappetizing to secular progressives in the West, or so they virtuously claim.

But such cavils were familiar in the '60s and '80s, too, as huge chucks of the solidarity movement found endless reasons to distance themselves from the Vietnamese NLF or the Nicaraguan FSLN. That said, ignorance about the Iraqi resistance is somewhat forgivable. This time there has been no Wilfrid Burchett reporting from behind the lines, and that has had consequences of the kind McGuire sketches out above.

Interesting points. What if someone took Cockburn at his word and organized a support effort for the Iraqis who are resisting the American occupation? Will the Executive Order outlined above kick in? Anyone care to take a chance?

The chilling effect occasioned by the common knowledge that anti-war activists are being watched cannot be ignored. That the government is watching us is not in dispute. It was revealed in late 2005 that the Bush administration was eavesdropping on telephone calls without a warrant. Although the Bushies said they were only listening to terrorists from overseas, further investigation proved that false. The eavesdropping involved domestic phone calls also.

The current furor over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' false testimony before Congress on eavesdropping and other shenanigans overlooks a key point. Gonzales' cagey testimony suggests that other surveillance programs are underway that we don't yet know about. According to Glenn Greenwald, who is staying on top of these things:

Since the end of 2005, Gonzales in particular has qualified almost every statement he has made before the Senate Judiciary Committee by drawing a distinction between (a) the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" (which means the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program in its incarnation when it was revealed in 2005 by the NYT) versus (b) "other intelligence activities," including whatever it was they were doing prior to March 2004 that prompted [former attorney general] Ashcroft and [former assistant attorney general] Comey's objections.

Greenwald's essay is a must-read. It's always been my belief that, as bad as we think it is, it's actually much worse. There is much that we don't know about government programs, particularly surveillance activities, which always seem to be exposed years after the fact. Read up on Cointelpro, for example, which was short for counter-intelligence program. Cointelpro was not a program focused on foreigners, but American lefists and agitators. It's never really gone away.

The July 17, 2007 Executive Order raises serious questions about the consequences of anti-war activism that crosses the line in the discretionary judgment of a Bush administration official. What is the true scope of this Order? Does it really criminalize anti-war activism? Anyone want to take a chance? To ask the question is to answer it. I wouldn't trust this administration to feed my dog, much less to protect First Amendment activity.