Steel yourself, America.

In a document dump of both exhilarating and terrifying proportions, the CIA announced it will release its “family jewels” next week: close to 700 pages of documents chronicling secret Agency activity from the fifties to the seventies. (A preview of what’s to come includes reports of detentions, wiretapping, surveillance, and other sordid current administration favorites.) “CIA Director Michael Hayden on Thursday called the documents being released next week unflattering, but he added that ‘it is CIA’s history.’ ‘The documents provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency,’ Hayden told a conference of historians.” Hmm, we’ll see.

The People v. Dick Cheney.

“He’s saying he’s above the law…It just seems to me this is arrogant and shows bad judgment.” Also in related news, historians probably shouldn’t expect a similar classified document dump a quarter-century from now: Word leaks from a congressional committee that Cheney has refused to comply with the National Archives in preserving classified documents over the past four years and even tried to abolish the office responsible for enforcing the law. “Cheney’s office declined to discuss what it called internal matters…The Justice Department confirmed yesterday that it is looking into the issue.” Another day, another imperial prerogative attempted by these lawless yokels in the White House.

Nope, can’t have those either.

Think I’m being shrill? Ok, here’s another: After listening to former Attorney General John Ashcroft discuss internal differences over Dubya’s illegal surveillance program yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-3 to issue subpoenas for White House and Justice Department documents regarding the eavesdropping system. “The White House made no move to comply.

RNCmail: Off the Radar.

It’s not just Karl. Newly released information finds that as many as 88 officials in the Dubya White House have been (illegally) using RNC e-mail addresses as a back-door way to discuss official business off the record. “‘As a result of these policies, potentially hundreds of thousands of White House e-mails have been destroyed, many of which may be presidential records,’ the report said.

Signs of Trouble.

“‘At least it makes clear the signing statements aren’t solely for staking out a legal position, with the president just saying, “I don’t have to do these things, but I will,”‘ Fein said. ‘In fact they are not doing some of these things. You can’t just vaporize it as an academic question.‘” Also in the administration malfeasance department, a new study by Congress’s Government Accountability Office finds that more often than not Dubya has been ignoring the laws he’s flagged in signing statements as not in tune with his imperial mood. “‘The administration is thumbing its nose at the law,’ said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), who requested the GAO study and legal opinion along with Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.). ‘This GAO opinion underscores the fact that the Bush White House is constantly grabbing for more power, seeking to drive the people’s branch of government to the sidelines,’ Byrd said in a joint statement with Conyers.

Rule of Law 1, Dubya 0.

“The President cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention…To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians…would have disastrous consequences for the constitution — and the country.” In what should have been a no-brainer, a federal appeals court rules 2-1 in the case of al-Marri v. Wright that Dubya can’t hold US residents indefinitely on suspicion alone. [Full opinion, and the dissent by a Bush appointee.] “The panel tailored its opinion to Marri’s circumstances; it does not directly apply to the more than 300 foreign nationals held as enemy combatants in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But lawyers for some captives noted that the same flaws the court found in the administration’s classification of Marri were true for Guantanamo detainees.”

Above the Law.

“The story isn’t who picked on a sick guy or even who did or didn’t break laws. The story is who gets to decide what’s legal. And the president’s now-familiar claim, a la Richard Nixon, is that it’s never illegal when he does it.Dahlia Lithwick drives home the disturbing message of last week’s Comey revelations. And, also in Slate, Frank Bowman offers another reason why Alberto Gonzales should be impeached: the firing of David Iglesias. Update: In related news, Specter thinks Gonzales will soon quit, particularly if the Senate passes a no-confidence vote on him. (The White House, thus far, disagrees.)

A Mockery of Justice.

“James B. Comey, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source.” By way of Medley, the WP blanches at a ridiculous attempt by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to secure warrantless wiretaps against the will of the Justice Department. “Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance without Justice’s authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of mass resignations — Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself — did the president back down.

Deconstructing Harvey.

“But reading Mansfield has real value for understanding the dominant right-wing movement in this country. Because he is an academic, and a quite intelligent one, he makes intellectually honest arguments, by which I mean that he does not disguise what he thinks in politically palatable slogans, but instead really describes the actual premises on which political beliefs are based. And that is Mansfield’s value; he is a clear and honest embodiment of what the Bush movement is.” Glenn Greenwald eviscerates Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield after the latter pens an op-ed for the WSJ entitled “The Case for the Strong Executive — Under some circumstances, the Rule of Law must yield to the need for Energy.” See the problem in that title? It kinda jumps out at you.

A Chicken in every pot, a plunger in every terrorist.

“If one of them gets elected, it sounds to me like we’re going on the defense. We’ve got a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. We’re going to wave the white flag there. We’re going to try to cut back on the Patriot Act. We’re going to cut back on electronic surveillance. We’re going to cut back on interrogation. We’re going to cut back, cut back, cut back, and we’ll be back in our pre-September 11 mentality of being on defense.” Meanwhile in related news, Rudy Giuliani lapses into aggro fearmonger mode to try to shore up his right-wing cred. That accompanying giant sucking sound you might hear is all of Hizzoner’s legitimately-earned but now hopelessly squandered Churchillian cred going right out the window…He seems to have reverted to his true colors much earlier than I anticipated. Said Barack Obama, correctly, of Rudy’s pathetic stunt, “[Giuliani has] taken the politics of fear to a new low…We know we can win this war based on shared purpose, not the same divisive politics that question your patriotism if you dare to question failed policies that have made us less secure. The threat we face is real, and deserves better than to be the punchline of another political attack.” Touche.