Musharraf's first act as president was to forge an alliance with the Taliban and, by extension, his country's radical Islamist parties. The marketing of Musharraf as a bulwark against radical Islam and the Taliban is one of the biggest jokes of the post-9/11 era. He wasn't for the Taliban before he was against them. He was the Taliban.

The leader says the nation must crack down on liberties to fight the war against terrorism.

The leader is surrounded by profiteers who make huge sums of money corrupting military budgets and political power.

The leader believes he is specially ordained from above to pursue his policies, which he believes are endorsed by higher authorities that exempt him from the rules of law and conduct that define democratic nations and democratic values.

This is the logic of the George W. Bushes and the Pervez Musharrafs of the world, who fail to respect democratic values, in the name of democratic values, with results that only help the enemy.

The Pentagon has launched a preventive strike against a target that military chiefs presumably regard as one of the most active current threats to US and world security—namely, the office of the vice president of the United States.

Thrusting back hard against Vice President Dick Cheney’s warmongering, the head of US forces in the Mideast declared that an attack on Iran “is not in the offing,” and more or less urged the vice president and his political allies to shut up.

Although Blackwater’s operatives must be held accountable, this is not just a case of rooting out “bad apples.” These forces were deployed without any accountability structure or effective oversight; their mission was to keep US officials alive by any means necessary. Blackwater has done that job, but we may never know how many Iraqis have died as a result. The investigation must determine which operatives killed the Iraqis on Sept. 16, but it can’t stop there. It must extend to those who hired them and deployed them, armed, dangerous and apparently above the law.

Panglossian Disorder: “The neurotic tendency toward extreme optimism in the face of likely cultural and planetary collapse.”

I have spoken elsewhere about the label “Doomer,” and I’ve come to believe that this frame is outdated. Instead, I would like to suggest that we must stop asking ourselves, given the lateness of the hour, why there are those pessimistic about the future, and begin asking, instead, why there are those still blindly and enthusiastically optimistic about it.

Torture? Are you kidding? Allegedly the most civilized, the most morally aware nation on the planet and we are still debating, in the highest courts and government offices in the land, about whether the United States should strap human beings to gnarled metal benches in rancid foreign bunkers and inflict such inexplicable terror and fear upon them that they confess to things they didn't even do just to get us to stop? Is this the Middle Ages? Are we regressing back to the goddamn cave?

Trusting the government -- or corporations -- is an invitation to abuses of power. Kerr wants Americans to sign off on that invitation and pass it on to Congress as it reviews the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which codifies the limits of domestic spying. The invitation should be declined. The Fourth Amendment is clear enough. It can do without the tinkering of high-level functionaries in the intelligence community. The definition of privacy that does needs amending is Kerr's.