Our new authoritarian oligarchy and enemy propaganda:

Looks like King Chimpy is really on the war path -- where else would he be? -- now that the Senate has handed the keys to the government over to him. [There's still the outside chance that the courts might intervene to check his excesses, but that's a slim hope. All he needs is for Justice John Paul Stevens to choke on his Crème Brule and it's all over.] Yesterday, W. hit the campaign trail and accused the Democrats of embracing the "enemy's propaganda." (So much for respecting the other side’s view point.) Speaking in front of another one of his careful selected military audiences, he said, "Some have selectively quoted from this document [the NIE] to make the case that by fighting the terrorists -- by fighting them in Iraq -- we are making our people less secure at home. This argument buys into the enemy's propaganda that terrorists attack us because we're provoking them." [Inquirer]

Gosh W., wouldn't the logical conclusion of your charging lead you to just round up all those spouting the enemy's propaganda and send them to Camp W.? Now that the Congress has given you the power to designate who an "illegal enemy combatant" is and lock them up without charges or the legal recourse to challenge their detention in the courts, you can pretty much do whatever you want. In fact, why even go through the formality of holding elections at all? We all know who these folks are -- these Islamo-fascist appeasers on the democratic side-- just lock 'em up.

While W. was accusing his opposition in Congress of being terrorists, Alberto "waterboard" Gonzales was putting all federal judges on notice. He told an audience at the Georgetown Law Center that federal judges shouldn't be injecting their personal views into rulings involving the president's war powers. Since the constitution says the president is the commander-in-chief, it "provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime. Judges must resist the temptation to supplement those tools based on their own personal views about the wisdom of the policies under review." Yes, judges may be appointed for life but this, "has never meant, and should never mean, that judges or their decisions should be immune" from public criticism. [WaPo] Or from prosecution perhaps?

Sounds like a threat to me. If I were Federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor (who he's obviously talking about here), I'd be thinking twice about suspending W.'s warranties domestic spying program. After witnessing John McCain just roll over on torture and Arlen Specter sputter and fume about the gutting of the 900-year old Writ of Habeas Corpus, but vote to gut it anyway, I wouldn't be feeling too secure about crossing the White House. If the GOP should happen to hold on to Congress, W. & Co. will be feeling free to cut out those few remaining vestiges of pre-9/11 American democracy, without much opposition.

The only thing I see standing in their way is a few "activist judges" who think we're still living in a free country. Get with the program, the United States is now being ruled by an authoritarian oligarchy. Now I understand what W. was seeing when he looked in Vlad "the impaler" Putin's eyes. A kindred spirit.