This morning on the Diane Rehm Show an attorney, Lee Casey, lawyer in private practice and former staff director of the Federal Legal Counsel in the Justice Department during the Reagan and first Bush administrations, parried all and any questions as follows.

The subject was the NYTimes report on the banking surveillance, its authorization, its legality, and the damage it did to the national security.  Questions were raised on the issue of the absence of Congressional oversight.  First Casey claimed that "certain members" of the House and Senate were notified, and oversight had occurred.  This Congress happens to agree with the administration.  If you don't like it then win an election. 

Casey left no question in the listener's mind that the only way to affect or participate in policy is to "win and election".  Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that this attack on the NYTimes is anything but a election tactic?

At least Casey didn't accuse the paper of treason as did a Tallahassee Democrat in an over the top poltical cartoon.  Mark Hohmeister believes that this cartoon represents not a few people in the South.  "All the Treason Fit to Print".

It seems to me that the Coulter, Limbaugh, Horowitz club has a new member.

In the department of "Boy, do I wish I'd said That",  Billmon's post titled   "The Totalitarian Temptation."

Billmon is on a roll.  Seems the Repblican "Treason" campaign is giving him fits.

This story in the Shreveport Times will do your hearts good.

Dear thing, Ann Coulter, is looking at the beginning of the end of her syndication.  The Shreveport Times wants to drop her column, not for a "liberal" replacement, but for another conservative voice. 

It seems Ms. Coulter is too much about Ms. Coulter and not enough about things conservative.

Ain't it awful.

...both [Mohammed Sidiqi] Khan and [[Ayman] Zawahiri's statements were made on a videotape bearing the distinctive logo of al-Sahab ("the clouds"), which is al-Qaeda's television production arm. Al-Sahab's first tape, a two-hour al-Qaeda infomercial, debuted on the Internet in the summer of 2001, signaling that a major anti-American attack was in the works. Since then, al-Sahab has continued to release key statements from al-Qaeda leaders.

Peter Bergen.

Dated July 2, 2006 Bergen's post focuses on the effectiveness of al Qaeda's "public diplomacy".  Questions that occur to me: Do we know anything about how al-Sahab is funded? Does anyone in the U.S. media know anything about al-Sahab? If we do why are we keeping it a secret?  Doesn't it make sense to expose this heretofore successful propaganda machine?