The line is getting perilously thin.

Think Progress highlights a floor speech by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a former U.S. Attorney who spent hours pouring over the classified legal briefs of the Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel. He was “dismayed” by what he uncovered. He got declassified a pair of legal assertions that should make every constitution loving American’s blood run cold. They say, effectively, that the President’s constitutional authorities are checked only by his own interpretations of them, and that he cannot be second-guessed by the Department of Justice. This is, in an acronym, FUBAR:

• The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

• The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

Slate on the government’s secretly disappearing secret evidence:

I know, I know. You think that what happens at Gitmo stays at Gitmo. Maybe. But the only thing more terrifying than convictions based on secret evidence is the possibility that when it comes time to fight those convictions, the secret evidence might just disappear.

(Hat tip: Daily Dish)

Reports about very innocent people being thrown into detention, where they could be held for years without any representation or charges, is distressing.

–White House unintentional ironicist Dana Perino, on Burma’s indefinite detentions

One you think you can win:

Resolved: That the Committee on the Judiciary shall investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Alberto Gonzales for high crimes and misdemeanors

In a 5-4 decision that justice Breyer declares “threatens the promise of Brown”, the Roberts court has blocked school integration plans in Seattle and Kentucky.

I’ve been holding out hope that Chief Justice Roberts was not one of the circular logic jerkoff lawyers the adminstration is crawling with.

You know, like David Addington, who actually argued that Cheney was not in the executive branch, or Alberto Gonzales, who declared that there’s no affirmative right of Habeas Corpus in the constitution, or John Yoo who redefined torture to mean anything other than the cruel despicable acts we inflict on detainees, and which for centuries have been understood as torture, whether practiced by the Soviets or the Cambodians or the Nazis or Torquemada.

I really thought maybe we’d gotten lucky with Roberts. Alito is clearly an asshole. But Roberts seemed just smart enough, perhaps just kind enough to make us proud, even in disagreement.

Then came today’s decision. Primo, Grade-A Bush Shit:

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race,” Roberts reasoned, “is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

So there you have it. Integration isn’t a measure to combat discrimination. It is discrimination. Why didn’t George Wallace think of that?

I think even Orwell might be shocked.

Thanks to the Roberts/Alito court, juveniles can kiss their first amendment rights goodbye.

Listen, the kid who unfurls a “Bong Hits for Jesus” banner at a school event is probably a douchebag. But, then so is Bill Kristol. Both are Americans, and just because one is a callow pothead doesn’t mean that his first amendment rights are any less deserving of protection. It’s not like the kid helped start a war or anything….

He made himself a nuisance with unruly speech. That’s his God given right in this country. Or at least it was until George’s activist judges took the bench.

Our fragile 84 year old voice of reason, John Paul Stephens gets the quote of the day: “This case began with a silly nonsensical banner. It ends with the court inventing out of whole cloth a special First Amendment rule permitting the censorship of any student speech that mentions drugs, so long as someone could perceive that speech to contain a latent pro-drug message.”

Assholes.

Let’s look at the facts.

Under the reign of Alberto Gonzales, we’ve seen an authorization of torture and the approval of 4th-Amendment defying wiretapping.

We’ve heard a claim that habeus corpus rights don’t exist, in spite of their black-and-white guarantee in the Constitution. And we’ve heard an assertion that executive rights that have no basis in the print of that document can in fact be found, implied, nebulously, in between the lines written by the founding fathers.

And the Democrats are going after him for firing eight political appointees … for political reasons?!? An abuse of discretion amid wanton abuses of power.

Listen, I’m as disturbed as the next guy that the administration has perverted the role of U.S. Attorney offices, making them just another Rovian fiefdom. But should this scandal — an esoteric wonkfest, at best — really have emerged as the Democrats’ top investigative priority?

I think it’s telling to look at the stakes in this battle. Who were the victims, aside from the fired attorneys? The most controversial firings are those of USAs who either were too agressive in investigating Republican scandals (see: Duke Cunningham) or not responsive to Bush administration desires to see Democrats prosecuted (see: New Mexico.)

That is to say that this is not only a scandal about the politicization of political apointees, but over those appointees’ work vis a vis politicians.

Fundamentally, this has gotten Democratic politicians’ attention — because it affects Democratic politicians.

Through their obsessive focus on this minor scandal, Democrats appear to be a party most committed to protecting their own — instead of emerging as a principled party concerned about protecting the 4th Amendment, Habeus Corpus, or humane-treatment rights of all Americans.

And that’s a goddamn shame.

Advice to aspiring U.S. Attorney candidates: Don’t get pregnant.

The document dump from the Department of Justice shook loose this letter from Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor to Alberto Gonzales in reference to the Karl Rove lackey Tim Griffin, who was appointed U.S. Attorney after the ouster of the popular and competent U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins.

What’s revelatory here is the excuse Gonzales’ liason gave Pryor for why Cummin’s deputy wasn’t elevated to the post: She was on maternity leave.

Pryor describes himself as “astonished” that DOJ would use “pregancy and motherhood as conditions that deny an appointment” argued that such “discrimination” would be actionable in court had such a decision been made in the private sector.

Check it out: