Category: The Dish

Richford, Vermont, 1.20 pm.

Can the executive branch now enter private property without a warrant if it believes there is something going on that could faintly be related to the war on terror? Seems so. And the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger enthusiastically concurs:

The Supreme Court’s purpose in Brigham was to clear up confusions among lower courts about "the appropriate Fourth Amendment standard governing warrantless entry by law enforcement in an emergency situation." I’d call the terror war an emergency. Brigham said the Court has held that officers can make a warrantless entry "onto private property" to fight a fire, investigate its cause, prevent the imminent destruction of evidence, and engage in pursuit of a fleeing suspect. Al Qaeda qualifies as all four. Yet another precedent cited for "obviating the requirement of a warrant" is "the need to protect or preserve life." That sounds like the point of the war on terror, but some may disagree.

So from now for the indefinite future, the government has "emergency" powers to violate your private property without a warrant, tap phones without a warrant, jail suspects indefinitely without due process, and even torture them? Eveyone concedes that some surrender of liberty is necessary in this new world. But the glee with which some conservatives greet the expansion of unlimited government power is truly remarkable.

Sydney, Australia, 8 am.

The Bush administration has broken all records in keeping its documents secret and classified. But one official is head and shoulders above everyone else. Money quote:

With 14 million decisions made last year to classify information, a slight decline from the 2004 record, and 29.5 million pages declassified last year — far fewer than the 100 million pages declassified in 2001. And once again, Vice President Dick Cheney, who has refused to report on his office’s classification activities since 2003, is missing from the count.

Despite an executive order signed by President Bush in 2003 requiring all agencies or “any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information’’ to report on its activities, the vice president’s office maintains that it has no legal obligation to report on its classification decisions.

They’re not just insisting on the right to classify anything they like; they’re refusing even to tell us what they’re classifying. It’s bad enough that Cheney has to seek re-election every four years – the indignity! – but that he should follow the president’s instructions? Please. He’s Cheney. The "accountability moment" is over.

Brezovo, Bulgaria, 12.30 pm.

From national joke … to national savior? My thoughts on an improbable make-over.

Jersey City, New Jersey, 6 pm.

It’s George W. Bush, argues Matthew d’Ancona. The feeling is mutual, apparently. And W has laid on the charm at times:

On one visit to Downing Street, Mr Blair’s team complimented the President on his outfit. "The Lord made me wear it," said Mr Bush with a straight face. When they realised he was teasing them, everyone in the room cracked up.

A Texan with more irony than a Brit? Stereotypes are made for breaking.

Clapham Common, London, 11am.

"That’s how this group of Bush followers thinks America is supposed to work. If you are a U.S. citizen, the President can unilaterally order you abducted and imprisoned; does not have to charge you with any crime; can block you from speaking with anyone, including a lawyer; can keep you incarcerated indefinitely (meaning forever); and can deny you the right to any judicial review of your imprisonment or any mechanism for challenging the accuracy of the accusations. And oh – while it would be nice if we could preserve all of that abstract lawyer nonsense about the right to a jury trial and all that, we’re really scared that Al Qaeda is going to kill us, so we can’t," – Glenn Greenwald, on his blog yesterday.