Methinks Netflix needs to work on their recommendation algorithms a bit more.

What the frickin’ hell does Hoyer think he’s doing?

[A] civil action may not lie or be maintained in a Federal or State court against any person for providing assistance to an element of the intelligence community, and shall be properly dismissed, if the Attorney General certifies to the district court of the United States in which such action is pending that . . . (4) the assistance alleged to have been provided . . . was –

(A) in connection with intelligence activity involving communications that was (i) authorized by the President during the period beginning on September 11, 2001, and ending on January 17, 2007 and (ii) designed to prevent or detect a terrorist attack, or activities in preparation of a terrorist attack, against the United States” and

(B) the subject of a written request or directive . . . indicating that the activity was (i) authorized by the President; and (ii) determined to be lawful.

So all the Attorney General has to do is recite those magic words — the President requested this eavesdropping and did it in order to save us from the Terrorists — and the minute he utters those words, the courts are required to dismiss the lawsuits against the telecoms, no matter how illegal their behavior was.

Call now.

Call Obama: tell him to speak out today, not wait until it passes and then complain about it. 866-675-2008

Call Hoyer: tell him to pull the bill. 202-225-3130

Call your Congresscritter: tell him or her to remember their oath to defend the Constitution.

No, rights for everyone under the jurisdiction of our country.

Why shouldn’t we allow Government, from time to time, to act outside of the Constitution? There are those who will point out that we are in dangerous times, and that it is sometimes necessary for the Government to take exceptional measures to ensure our protection.

The answer is fundamental: the Constitution exists to enumerate exactly what Government is allowed to do. In this country We, The People, control all the rights and liberties of our Nation…and we grant to Government some powers from time to time as we choose through the Constitution. From time to time we also remove some of those powers.

What we never do is allow Government to grant unto itself rights, or to strip We, The People of rights.

The Court, in this ruling, reasserts that most basic of American principles—that Government is under the control of The People—that it is not a power unto itself, that its powers derive from the grants we give it…and that every person affected by the Government’s actions has a basic right to contest those actions, whether the Government likes it or not.

In my latest crosspost in the series on Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment, one of the commenters linked to this editorial.

Editorialists, while refusing to honestly report on this Constitutional crisis, have been parroting the claim of gutless and calculating Democratic Party leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in saying that with the nation at war and with a critical election approaching, there are “more pressing” matters to consider than impeachment, and that impeachment would be a “diversion.”

This is nonsense. As hundreds of American troops continue to die each quarter in a war that never should have happened, and that was launched five years ago and continued for half a decade thanks to administration lies and deception, there is nothing more important facing this nation than restoring Constitutional government and Constitutional checks and balances—something that can only be done through the Constitutional process of impeachment.

Unless this is the end of our form of Constitutional government, we will have later Presidents who will try to do the same things unless we show them that we will not stand for having everything we stand for destroyed.

The Obama campaign has a website called FightTheSmears.com, on which they give the truth about various smears that have been going around. The lead story currently is the non-existent “whitey” tape.

I just saw a poll linked to McCain’s campaign site that I decided I had to vote in. Once I clicked through the “give us money” page to get to the main site, I found the following. Nice worldview, huh?

LibriVox attempts to do for audiobooks what Project Gutenberg has for printed ones. They take public domain works and have volunteers read them. Once the files are assembled (for example, chapters of a book, or multiple readers on a single short poem), they are placed in the public domain in turn.

A while ago, I did my first LibriVox upload, reading Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s (yes, that Bulwer-Lytton) “When Stars Are In The Quiet Skies” as part of their weekly short poem series, where they ask as many readers as possible to do each poem. I was one of 17 readers that week: you can hear the results on Archive.org.

I’ve said this before, but not nearly so eloquently.

But he is not alone in the delusion he propounds in the first sentence of today’s killer graf. Nearly every candidate, commentator and speechifier will, at convenient times, refer to the President of the United States as “the nation’s commander-in-chief” or “our commander-in-chief.”

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution begins:

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States”

This is a very specific delineation. When broad powers are claimed for the President, many rightly so, in his role as “commander-in-chief,” these broad powers do not automatically apply to those persons not in the armed forces of the United States. Where they exist at all, they apply to the men and women of the uniformed services of the Army and Navy, the state Guards and other armed services.

The president not only is impotent to hold me without allowing me to demand the charges against me, he is impotent to search or seize my person, goods and papers without a warrant showing probable cause. He is enjoined from quartering his armed troops on my property.

In point of fact, the president of the United States cannot do a damned thing to me that the Constitution does not specifically allow him to do. And this limitation to his powers, embodied in the purposefully broad Tenth Amendment, holds because I am not a member of the armed forces.

In short, the president is not my commander-in-chief. Odds are, he is not yours, either. He is not Antonin Scalia’s commander in chief, not Hillary Clinton’s nor Chris Matthews’.

For us, the citizens of and visitors to the United States, he is the Chief Executive, pledged to take care that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed. He is not our commander. He is our servant.

Tom Smith, the World’s Fastest Filker, tore his left quad tendon the other day, and as I understand it, doesn’t have much in the way of insurance. He has a Virtual Guitar Case that’s been set up on his site for a while: if you can, go over and drop something in. Even better, order his CDs. I especially recommend the downloads for Homecoming: Marcon 2005 and Live at GAFilk: those may have been the best $9.98 I ever spent.

The Supreme Court today ruled that the detainees at Guantanamo do have the right to try to prove they shouldn’t be there.

It bears repeating that our opinion does not address the content of the law that governs petitioners’ detention. That is a matter yet to be determined. We hold that petitioners may invoke the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus. The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law.