No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

In the last two weeks we have seen multiple examples of what civil liberties advocates have been warning about over and over again. The infrastructure of the police state, put together behind the scenes and with secret rooms and fusion centers, was put on display in a number of different places.

I have written previously about how the administration will be more concerned with covering its tracks than anything else in its final months, and recently the pace has picked up. Maybe the passage of the new FISA bill kicked it off in the same way Memorial Day informally starts summer in America (and Labor Day ends it - you can keep all your fancy solstices and equinoxes). Whatever the cause though, the effort is underway to run out the clock, cloud the law and excuse the guilty. A key leader is Michael Mukasey. He has already shown a willingness to be a demagogue on terrorism and an apologist for torture. Now he is wants Congress to ignore the Boumediene decision with a leap of logic that would - literally - create the permanent environment of a police state:

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled this week that the White House's Office of Administration (OA) does not have to turn over documents relating to the disappearance of potentially millions of emails. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and in her decision Kollar-Kotelly wrote "the Court concludes that OA is not an agency subject to the FOIA". CREW plans to appeal.

She acknowledged that until the administration decided otherwise "OA considered itself an agency subject to the FOIA and operated as such." Why should a decades-long practice under Republican and Democratic administrations alike be so casually disregarded? Considering the reverence for precedents in the judicial system it would seem logical that longstanding conventions elsewhere would be granted some measure of respect. Instead she concludes that even though the OA always considered itself bound by FISA and responded accordingly, all that was required to end this long-running practice was for the current President to order it.

Well of course, I went right down to the chain bookstore and snapped up a copy just as soon as I could. That’s my guarantee to this administration: every time one of the Bush worms turns, I’m running straight out to buy his or her book.

I’m already a hundred pages into it; it’s poorly written but it’s certainly worth reading and studying. What’s amazed me in the past few days is how successful the media and GOP have been in selling an idea: the idea that the story here is “the character of Scott McClellan.” That’s not the story. The story here is the content and assertions in the McClellan book—not McClellan’s character or motives, which ceased to interest anyone the moment he left his position as White House press secretary.

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What is wrong with the Congress of the United States? Are they asleep at the wheel, or are they cowards, afraid to fulfill their duty to the American people? It's about time for the people of the United States to demand answers! The news and Internet is filled with stories that demonstrate, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that President Bush has committed high crimes and possibly treason, yet Congress remains silent, apparently cowed into submission by a Presidency that for all practical purposes, is now a full-blown dictatorship and is flaunting our laws, trampling upon the constitution, and is publicly defying every rule of law - and Congress is still mute, refusing to do anything to stop Bush and Cheney's deliberate goose-stepping the country into another war in the Middle-East.

Our enemies didn't adhere to the Geneva Convention. Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto death. But every one of us -- every single one of us -- knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them. - John McCain, Republican US Senator

For all practical purposes, President Bush is now a lame-duck President. If that's the case, then why is his administration working so hard to take away even more of America's constitutional rights and his departmental heads are ramping-up their efforts to increase the spying on Americans? The common logic is that when Bush leaves office, some semblance of sanity will return to the United States and we will continue conducting whatever "war on terror" that needs to be undertaken without violating the constitutional rights of innocent Americans. We are all hoping the 2008 elections will bring back the rule of law to Washington, and these illegal and unconstitutional programs will be dismantled. That's what we are hoping...

The Protect America Act (PAA) expires on February 1st. To this point there has been silence from the White House on this, which is not a surprise. Over the summer they waited until the last minute and then raised the roof about how the terrorist killers would slit your children's throats with hunting knives if Congress didn't bring us a few steps closer to being a police state immediately.

There have been a few different events this week that could foreshadow a different approach towards the President. It looks like his aura of invincibility may have been chipped away in a number of important ways, and for the first time there may be reason to think an effective push against his imperial style has begun.