If you still think it's no big deal that Bush's Congress gifted  him warrantless spying power, then here's some newly released history about our slippery slide into fascism. After Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, the FBI spied on Coretta Scott King, read her private mail, recorded her phone calls, and tailed her wherever she went, all that without a warrant. Remember, this was illegal. Mrs. King never had committed a crime. So, why did it happen? Dick Nixon and his boys were afraid Mrs. King would stir up the civil rights movement against the Vietnam War. When Nixon was caught red-handed, an indignant Congress passed an act in  1977 requiring  the government to obtain a warrant before spying on its citizens. Fast forward: You already know that GW Bush started spying on American citizens in violation of that law, and he, like Nixon, was caught. Bush then  instructed his majority in Congress to amend the law to allow certain kinds of electronic spying on citizens, note, without warrant or review. In this case, a Pontiff President and his cronies never flinched when they subtracted from our civil rights. Be careful what you say about the government.

• A grateful thanks to Thomas Jefferson and the others for not giving us a constitution like the one of pre-Nazi Germany. Ours lets us say Just hold it right there! but Hitler's takeover was absolutely legal: he eliminated his critical judges, put in his own, and murdered a nation.
• This Thursday, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero ordered the FBI to stop issuing National Security Letters. Marrero ruled that the letters violate the First Amendment and the Constitution’s separation-of-powers and that they were "the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free-pass to the hijacking of constitutional values."
• Background: National Security Letters permit the FBI to demand information from others about our private lives, e.g., our use of telephones, libraries, doctors, schools, internet, and banking. If you get a national security letter from the FBI, you will be criminally prosecuted if you tell anyone you got the letter. The critical part of this is that the FBI doesn't have to get a judge to authorize the letter. That means the Bureau goes hunting without a license. The Government admits to issuing  19,000 National Security Letters in 2005 alone. 

Darfurs murder Darfurs. Iraqis murder Iraqis. The world is crazy, but Americas step out of their ethnic boxes and get along with their neighbors. Around 1900, Oakland Blacks were learning the jokes and talk of their immigrants neighbors. Royal E. Towns, an African-American, said that West Oakland was then a uniquely cosmopolitan town, and many of its national and ethnic groups shared a tradition of neighborliness, coopera­tion, and goodwill. To show what he had learned as a child growing up there, Towns related several jokes and personal incidents -- in both Irish and in Jewish accents. He told another story that took place during World War II when he was in Brooklyn, New York and was trying to visit his son who was serving on a Merchant Marine ship. But when Towns tried to get down to the dock an Irish policeman blocked his way. Said Towns, "With all the flannel on his tongue that he could possibly have, the cop says, 'No yuz don't. An n'body goes down to the ship, and arders is arders.' " Towns showed his identification that he was a lieutenant in the Oakland Fire Department and his port pass to visit ships in San Francisco harbor. The cop turns red and yells, "I don't give a damn what fire department yer from, you don't go down to the ship, and 'arders is arders." Towns smiles and says, "'You know what, you're the first Irishman that ever believed me. Say, when was you born--in the year of the black potatoes or the year of the big wind?" The cop does a double-take, "Where'd yuz get the blarney!" Towns answers, "Out where I live in Oakland." And the cop says, "Many Irishmen out there?" Towns: " 'Ha! I was born in old man O'Brien's house right next to Mr. Tracy's, an' there was the O'Boyles, the O'Hallihans, the McAllisters,' and jeez, I started naming a whole gang of micks, you know. And then the cop says, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute!' and he calls over another cop and says, 'Hey, Pat, come 'ere and take this Irishman down to the boat.' " --Adapted from Pioneer Urbanites by Douglas Henry Daniels, pp. 75-105.