Jack in the Box

"The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

"Translation: I will violate this law whenever I feel like it. I hoped we had put this issue behind us. It appears we haven't."

Bill Kristol lambastes the left:

"No reasonable American, no decent human being, wants to send up a white flag in the war on terror. But leading spokesmen for American liberalism-hostile beyond reason to the Bush administration, and ready to believe the worst about American public servants-seem to have concluded that the terror threat is mostly imaginary. It is the threat to civil liberties from George W. Bush that is the real danger. These liberals recoil unthinkingly from the obvious fact that our national security requires policies that are a step (but only a careful step) removed from ACLU dogma."

After quoting deputy intelligence chief Michael Hayden as saying the administration had gotten information it could not have obtained with court-approved wiretapping, Kristol notes that the next day, "the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee blathered on about 'the Constitution in crisis' and 'impeachable conduct.' Barbara Boxer, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asserted there was 'no excuse' for the president's actions. The ranking Democrat on that committee, Joseph Biden, confidently stated that the president's claims were 'bizarre' and that 'aggrandizement of power' was probably the primary reason for the president's actions, since 'there was no need to do any of this.'

"So we are really to believe that President Bush just sat around after 9/11 thinking, 'How can I aggrandize my powers?' Or that Gen. Hayden--and his hundreds of nonpolitical subordinates--cheerfully agreed to an obviously crazy, bizarre, and unnecessary project of 'domestic spying'? This is the fever swamp into which American liberalism is on the verge of descending."

Kos has infuriated the right with a posting titled "Why Are Conservatives So Afraid?", ripping "an administration that parlays the incessant fear of its supporters into increased authoritativeness to the point where he now resembles the very despot we fought in our war of independence. And his supporters bellow, as they cower under their beds . . .

"These blowhards pretend they are macho even as they piddle on themselves in abject terror from every 'boo!' that comes out of Osama Bin Laden's mouth. They like to speak about how tough they are, even though they send others to fight their battles and couldn't last a day in places like Iraq, or Sudan, or the El Salvador of my youth, or any other war-torn nation.

"The breathtaking cowardice of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists knows no bounds. They hide behind the American flag and our genuinely brave men and women in uniform."

Among those on the right punching back is Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters:

"Markos Moulitsas has lost it -- and the candidates who pay him for his services might have some explaining to do about their views on national security in the future . . .

"Kos loves freedom of speech when that speech agrees with him. He loves civilian control of the military when those civilians belong to MoveOn, but not when they belong to the Republican Party. In fact, Kos doesn't like American values at all -- he only uses them when convenient to his argument, but in fact would rather have a Starship Troopers (the movie) government made up of military bureaucrats making all of our decisions for us. He has no respect for those who did go to Iraq to help with security -- recalling his infamous 'Screw 'em' to the civilians who did believe in the mission enough to go over and help out, smearing them as 'mercenaries' -- and then calls those who stay home and support the mission 'cowards'."