Whistling by the Cemetery

While Digby is away Glenn Greenwald and Julia are subbing. Glenn has done yeoman's work and distills the legal mumbo jumbo around Bush's criminal spying on Americans.

What puts the icing on the cake as it were is Glenn has found a brief by Ted Olsen from a couple of years back that completely refutes the current argument of the Whitehouse on why it was OK to break the law. I would say this is pretty much a slam dunk from my non-legal point of view.

The clarity of this law is why the Administration is reduced to peddling legal theories which, no matter how they are sliced, amount to a claim that George Bush has the right to break the law. And to argue that he has that right, they are employing on George Bush's behalf the very legal theories which advocates of "judicial restraint" have spent the last two decades ridiculing and attacking.

Amen brother.