Yesterday David Broder wrote a column which one TPM Reader, more or less fairly, described as Broder’s expression of shock, shock at just what Dick Cheney has been up to over the last six-plus years. And this is a good opportunity to say that the Post’s ‘Angler’ series seems to be becoming the trigger for that transition moment where consensus establishment opinion goes from seeing the vice president as the powerful administration heavy with a sometimes creepy but largely comic penchant for secrecy to an altogether more nefarious force who has used his unprecedented power as vice president to advance an agenda of official secrecy, non-accountability, untrammeled executive power, legitmized torture and general degradation of the rule of law.
But this is far too easy. Because the simple fact is that we’ve known almost all of this for years.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking the series, which is quite good. In journalism, details, the specifics are all. But the story in general has been out there for years, as well as a good number of the specifics, strewn over hundreds, probably thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, online and off.
In other words, when it comes to recognizing Cheney’s profoundly damaging effect on American constitutionalism as well as his guiding role in essentially all of the administration’s most disastrous policies, the train already left the station some time ago.
Sorry.
It’s back to the Supreme Court again for the administration’s detainee policy. This time, it might mean the closure of Gitmo as a preemptive measure. And you know how accomplished they are at preemption.
Uh, oh — real trouble ahead for Mitt.
The worst story yet for the Romney campaign goes national.
Conyers and Leahy make the next move in the battle with the White House over the U.S. attorney firings.
Yesterday, the White House asserted a blanket claim of executive privilege for everything the House and Senate judiciary committees were seeking. Today, Conyers and Leahy have responded with a letter asking for a more specific response. If they don’t get it, they say, then the fight goes to the next level.
Hillary and Bill unveil new plan to deliver personal video reports directly to your computer screen from the campaign trail in Iowa.
Everyone in Washington keeps telling us that the big drop-dead political moment on Iraq will come when General Petraeus gives us his report in September.
But Spencer Ackerman points to some compelling evidence suggesting that the far more significant Iraq assessment may come in an accompanying report from U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker — whose report, Ackerman theorizes, may undercut Petraeus and help the antiwar cause.
Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) cheerleads the Justice Department’s investigation of… him.
Elizabeth Edwards explains to Wolf Blitzer as clearly as possible exactly what’s wrong with Ann Coulter.
Senator Jim Webb to ratchet up role against Iraq War. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.