Can it!

I'm so tired of these Constitution hanging by a thread pieces. We should all admit that what really prevents our becoming like Thailand is that the people will not stand for a coup and neither would the military. We can have bitter disputes, but nobody is going to lose their precious liberties because the president is taking measures to defend us from treacherous enemies in our midst. All the leaks we've seen, about the NSA or the SWIFT program have been for political purposes, not out of real fear that the President is trying to create a Gestapo. The NSA, FBI, CIA and Pentagon are so overlawyered that everybody knows that taking actions that can't be defended by reason is the surest way to bring down a publicity storm on your head. Karl Rove and Scooter Libby didn't do anything but pass on scuttlebutt that they'd heard, and they've been put through a wringer.

The real threat comes from having a friendly press. Like the one that graced the JFK and FDR presidency. Nixon never really had a chance to succeed at the kind of things that JFK got away with. George Bush has been a model of propriety and he's still pilloried as a would-be dictator by editorials and columists every day.

If you want to protect the Constitution, keep electing people the press can't stand. That way you'll always know that there will be plenty of leaks and close scrutiny. It's when the president gets softball press conferences like I remember Jack Kennedy having where serious screwups got laughed off because he was so charming, that people should be worried about the FBI being used for political purposes. George Bush wouldn't even think of the kind of stuff that the Clinton's used the FBI for, because he knows if he tried, thr reaction would be about like the Monica Lewinsky scandal, except that he'd be convicted and removed. Republicans wouldn't defend that kind of thing.