The gift of retroactive immunity just keeps on giving

Glenn Greenwald was out front of the party AT&T threw for Blue Dog (conservative) Democrats prior to the DNC.

He conjectures that AT&T is providing party payback for all of those who helped pitch retroactive immunity in the FISA bill.

Seems like he might be right.

Oh, but damn, Glenn has balls, but he could use a few lessons in basic video production.

In which the bully and his friends hang out in the yard and boast

The resident of the White House, invited his minions into the garden to gloat over their victory to embellish the power of the executive branch.

There he is, with the usual group of lockstep-voting, non-compromising Republicans, the deceitful attorney general, the untrustworthy head of "national intelligence," and a cadre of traitorous blue-dog Democrats, patting each other on the back for creating an act which will "protect our people."

Oh, the delightful, ironic resonances of that phrase. "Protect our people," indeed. The corporate telecommunications executives will be protected from lawsuits. Our people. The executive branch operatives who convinced the telecoms to break the law will be protected. Our people. The president and vice-president will be protected. Our people. The CIA, NSA and FBI will be protected. Our people. The suspected terrorist who is thrown into a foreign prison without hope of basic legal representation, or any of the rights of habeus corpus won't be protected. That's okay - not out people.

Remember, this crew in the Rose Garden yesterday, these are the folks who wanted to put librarians in jail for refusing to respond to national security letters issued by the FBI.

Read the signing speech. It's a joke on us. But it ain't funny.