The New Despotism

The founders of the American experiment were vary aware that the republic is a fragile form of government. The concensus of world intellectuals at the time was that it probably couldn't work, and would inevitably fail like so many republics past. The constitution and the rule of law were intended as guards against the usurpation of authority by a ruler and for the protection of minority interests.

The end of the twentieth century saw the collapse of the communist despotism in Europe and it vast weakening everywhere. Democracy asserted its appeal in South Africa, South American, and elsewhere. Unfortunately, the new century has not seen the good news continue. A couple of bad omens in the news: The New York Times reports here that Putin's Senior Economic Advisor has resigned,

warning that Russia's nascent political freedoms have been lost and the Kremlin's economic choices have been poor. He also said that he had no more ability to influence the government's course.

The official, Andrei N. Illarionov, 44, had been an economic adviser to the Kremlin since shortly after Mr. Putin took office nearly six years ago. His tenure in recent years had turned publicly rocky, and he had become an occasional but memorable critic of Kremlin policy.

Meanwhile, United Press International has reported that:

Bush was denied wiretaps, bypassed them

In other words, Bush chose to continue with wiretaps despite the express decision of the court that they were not legally justified. Given the FISA court's history of approving almost all requested wiretaps, this strongly suggests that there was something fishy about the wiretaps requested. If this report is true, Bush quite deliberately chose to violate the law in defiance of the courts, rejecting the obvious legal options he had (Appealing to a higher court, or going to the Congress for a change in the law).

This is only a guess of course, but given this (assuming it's true), and the highly peculiar behavior surrounding the failure of the Congress to confirm Bolton as UN Ambassador because of wiretaps problems, I'm guessing that spying on political appointments was involved.

UPDATE: Just caught former Justice Department lawyer David Rivkin defending the wiretaps on CNN. His main argument was a familiar big lie: That the FISA law was designed for criminal cases not for intelligence. Hello! It's called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, moron! Naturally the CNN Bimbo doing the interview was too dumb to notice this or question it.