Politics and Advent

This seems like a good point in time to do this.

Slightly over a week ago, no one was talking about wiretaps, the NSA, FISA, or expecting the PATRIOT ACT to do anything but finally pass.

One can say that the worse thing that happened was that Medicare, Medicaid, and student loans were all cut this week. But those are constituencies who vote (v., say, the poor of New Orleans, who are still largely voiceless and ignored), so the wisdom of those actions, politically (let's set aside "morally," which, sadly, has not the strength it should in our political culture) is dubious, at best.

Today, one FISA judge has very publicly resigned from that secret and largely rubber-stamp court, and the remaining FISA judges are angry about how they've been mis-treated and want answers to their questions; a short-list Supreme Court nominee reprimands the government for playing fast and loose with criminal procedure and due process; the current Supreme Court nominee is so connected to the President's unfounded legal argument on Presidential power that his cause now seems hopeless; the wiretap story is much bigger than even the President has hinted at; in short, we are in the beginning throes of a full-blown Constitutional crisis.

Sounds like Advent is just in time. Venite ad iudicum.

Marana tha.