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Keith Olbermann produced an absolute masterpiece this evening.

This is real Must See TV.

But while it has become conventional wisdom, although debunked by the 9/11 Report, that Mr. Clinton dropped an offer from Sudan to hand over bin Laden… it is rare to hear anyone discuss whether similar… but real feelers were extended to Mr. Bush.

And it is, we suspect, even more rare, to see this tape, of the Bush White House addressing reports of such feelers in February, 2001, after we knew al Qaeda had attacked the Cole:

Q: The Taliban in Afghanistan, they have offered that they are ready to hand over Osama bin Laden to Saudi Arabia if the United States would drop its sanctions, and they have a kind of deal that they want to make with the United States. Do you have any comments?

MR. FLEISCHER: Let me take that and get back to you on that.

There is no record of any subsequent discussion on the matter.

Every American should watch this the next time they consider whether this Administration has made, is making, and will make America safer.

I'm not a buisness man I'm a buisness, MAN

Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they're turned around.

....

Welcome back

Are you sure?

Coltrane hits the nail on the head below...same product launch, new year. The least these guys could do is bring out a different fall line. But all this Administration knows is fear, as if they read the cliff notes to 1984 every monrning before breakfast and think "Hey, that could work."

But I digress...

What caught my eye today was these words out of the mouth of Jeffery Toobin in an interview he did on CNN yesterday...

So even if the president gets his proposal through, it is not at all clear that the court will approve it, especially given one provision we didn't discuss much ... secret evidence. And this is something that Sen. Lindsey Graham has focused on a lot. And he said, "Look, there's no court in America, especially the Supreme Court, that is going to uphold executing somebody ... based on evidence he never saw."

And I think Sen. Graham raises a very profound point there. So that's something that we've got to keep in mind. The politicians can agree or disagree, but they don't have the last word.

Those nine folks across First Street in Washington, they have the last word.

I never thought I would say this in my country, but I feel like we are one SCOTUS vacany away from not being able to be so sure that Sen. Graham is correct. Go back and read the dissenting opinions of the Hamdan ruling, and you quickly realize that certain justices are much more interested in protecting this President, than upholding the Constitution of the United States. The Congress has already decided they are no more than a rubber stamp, an with the recent Supreme Court appoints, SCOTUS isn't far behind.

As they say, absolute power corrupts, absolutely.

This is for all the marbles. Either we stand up to this end run around the Constitution and everything that makes us Americans in good standing in the civilized world, or we give in to our inner demons by acting like the bad guys and...let me quote The Decider here..."We let the terrorists win".

What He Said

Billmon speaks...you listen...

What will be on the table then is the question of whether a nation as powerful and potentially dangerous to others as America (the proverbial bull in the china shop) can survive on brute force alone -- without moral legitimacy or political prestige, without true allies (save for the world's other leper regimes) and without "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind"

We're not there yet, but that is the direction we're heading, and a unilateral decision to redefine the Geneva Conventions (without actually admitting that we're doing it) would take us another few hundred miles down the road.

Click the link and read the entire thought provoking post.

Are we ready to surrender everything that has made us American, that easily?

Are we still the land of the free, and the home of the brave?