Must-read editorial in today’s New York Times:

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.

The rest of the editorial goes over ground already covered by The Mahablog, but read it anyway. It’s a first-rate synopsis of the ongoing atrocity known as “the Bush Administration’s justification for warrantless wiretapping.”

When you are done with the editorial, head on over to Newsweek for “Palace Revolt” by Daniel Klaidman, Stuart Taylor Jr. and Evan Thomas. This provides new insight in how the above-mentioned ongoing atrocity came into being, and how some Justice Department attorneys — conservative Bush appointees, no less — stood their ground against the infamous “torture memo” and the White House’s circumvention of FISA.

Then, still at Newsweek, see Jonathan Alter’s “The Political Power of Truth.” A pinch:

For four and a half years, Bush has politicized 9/11. His political motto has been “The only thing we have to use is fear itself.” He was at it again last week, claiming with zero evidence that congressional scrutiny of the illegal NSA wiretapping would “give the enemy a heads-up on what we’re doing.” The media and the Democrats have both been intimidated by this devastatingly effective political strategy. It won the 2002 and 2004 elections for the Republicans and will continue to be their game plan for this November.

At first glance, making the Democrats seem soft on “terrorist surveillance” looks like another winner for the GOP. For Democrats to explain that they don’t oppose all eavesdropping but object to the way it was done is a two-step answer that’s too complicated to fly. A better approach would be to argue that Bush’s NSA program has been a failure because it has threatened civil liberties and violated the law without doing anything to catch Osama bin Laden. The NSA obviously hasn’t been eavesdropping on the right suspects.

This would fit with the Democrats’ idea of fighting fear with failure—Bush’s failure. New polls show his approval ratings in the dismal low 40s, with strong majorities believing he has failed on every score except keeping the country safe. (A majority of those polled not surprisingly support Bush on eavesdropping on terror suspects domestically. So do I. But when the constitutional questions are raised, his numbers drop.) To confront the security issue, Wesley Clark is chairing a PAC to help the nine Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans running for Congress as Democrats (versus one as a Republican). The idea is to adopt the Rovean strategy of attacking your opponent’s strength.

Will it work? In recent years, failure and incompetence have been trounced by fear at the ballot box. The former is based on reason and an examination of the facts; the latter on emotion, with 9/11 as a trump card. But now reality may be making a comeback, as Bush’s authority breaks into a million little pieces.

This sounds like a plan. General Clark’s WesPAC is doing a lot of good stuff and deserves more attention, IMO.