Huh?

Taking judicial review of highly compromising federal surveillance activities away from the judicial branch and handing it over to...Alberto Gonzales would seem cause for some consternation.

Remarkably, there's a strange disconnect between the fury of many bloggers and the condemnation of groups like the ACLU on the one hand, and the relative reticence of large media, including not just the Times but even tonight's breezy NPR discussion via Andrea Seabrook on NPR. (Schorr had his own take.) Strange, that something reaching so far into basic principles of rights(including physical searches), powers, and priorities would garner this mass of dead air between squealing mice and bovine placidity.

Greenwald, of Congress:

...what they’ve done is they convened Congress and stayed in session under the President's order to revise a law at his direction, that they actually have no idea how it’s been administered and what this government has been doing.

Marjorie Cohn, about the law:

It basically hands over the power. It takes the power out of a judge’s hands and puts it in the power of Alberto Gonzales and the director of intelligence.

Is it that there are no publicly available media mechanisms for examining and judging this sort of thing? Too many campaign dollahs at stake? The only thing clear is that MSM has punted the punting of Congress.

Has the entire country turned into a quivering mass of bushdumb chickenshit?

Strange.