The Republican wolf, full of hot air as always, has once again started to huff and puff in an attempt to blow down our Democratic House of Representatives.

A new ad smears vulnerable freshman Democrats in the House for their principled stand against the FISA legislation in its current form - the grossly misnamed (until amended) "Protect America Act," which includes no provisions to, well, protect Americans from the unjustified intrusions of government surveillance. It protects telecoms who broke the law, however, and Democrats in the House have so far been brave enough to stand against it. If you visit Dkos even occasionally, you'll have seen front page stories by mcjoan and others on the continuing debacle.

Read over the fold for more about how to help Russ Feingold, the Senator who along with Chris Dodd has been at the cutting edge of trying to amend the FISA bill, protect these Representatives from unjust attacks by a group that includes, among others, Joe Lieberman.

In the beginning, there was kos. Kos created his blog. And he beheld it, and said that it was good. But eventually kos needed a vacation - and since the blogosphere knows no sabbath, or at any rate likes to chatter all day Sunday, he asked a guy named Larry Lessig to fill in for him.

Lessig is more than just an early frontpager. He's been an advocate for the principles that make communities like ours work intelligent and effective enough that you could call him the Thomas Jefferson of the netroots (or, with Wired magazine, "the Elvis of cyberlaw"). A Stanford law professor and prominent supporter of Barack Obama, he has been a champion of net neutrality, freedom of speech on the internet, technologically savvy copyright reform and, most recently, governmental ethics reform. His ideas on this remind me of my own political hero, Russ Feingold.

Lessig is considering a run for Congress in CA-12, but since there will be a Democratic primary, the party won't help him yet. Only we can. And he needs to hear from us before March 1. Will you help?

That's right, the dynamic duo of George W and John "torture memo" Yoo are at it again, and they've nearly slipped under the dKos radar today. Let's not let that happen.

The pair who brought us waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, and Gitmo have been thinking about what went wrong, and they've found at least one answer: too much resistance from military lawyers (JAGs) with consciences or even just sufficient knowledge of the law.

Their solution: put the JAGs under the direct control of the President by ensuring that he has authority over their promotions. This would in effect make the military's lawyers accountable to the President rather than to the law, eliminating a vital check on both the administration and the military alike. The best way to get away with torture? Make sure there's no one there with the courage to say it happened.

This story broke on the front page of today's Boston Globe, reported by Charlie Savage - the heroic journalist who won a Pulitzter this year for shedding light on W's mindboggling abuse of signing statements. Read over the fold for why this should alarm us...

If I'm Dick Cheney, and I realize that Congress is unlikely to make the same mistake twice and authorize (if not declare - who needs that?) a second war, I'm wondering what technicality might make such authorization unnecessary.

For the past few years, we have been outraged by the Bush administration's claim that it could label just about anyone an "illegal enemy combatant" and throw them into Gitmo for a few years of near-solitary confinement and the occasional round of 24-hour, 24-style questioning.  

This has meant a violation of human rights and a national disgrace for the US. Wesley Clark just a few days back thought it important enough to write about in an op-ed for the NYTimes, "Why Terrorists Aren't Soldiers," explaining that to label a terrorist as an illegal sort of soldier rather than a criminal both legitimates terrorism and wrongly extends military control over civilians.

But the Bush administration, as just reported in the New York Times, has now become interested not in defining terrorists as soldiers, but in defining Iranian soldiers as terrorists. What's the difference?

“I made a career change 20 years ago to be a full-time elected official,” Mr. Capuano said, explaining his position. “I am no longer qualified to be a tax attorney. It is like saying to people, ‘Please, come into public service, give it your all, and when you are done you are completely unqualified for anything else.’

What is Mr. Capuano being asked to do that would so jeopardize his career? Are we talking about term limits? Is congress -- strange thought -- a bad place to keep abreast of current tax law? Are congressional salaries being drastically cut?

Read over the fold...  

Meet Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turk who spent five years in our (I shudder at the implications of the first person) custody at Gitmo.

There's an  interview with him in the German daily Die Welt that managed to make the horror of all this new again for me... and Kurnaz's situtation seems doubly significant because of the way it ties into debates about immigration.

As the son of Turkish 'guest-workers,' Kurnaz is not a German citiizen. So he ended up a stateless person twice over, with no government looking out for him and the US government... well, read over the fold to see what was done to him.