GD it:

After telling an audience that young people today "think work is a four-letter word," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said she apologized to her daughter.

If it comes down to it, I will of course vote for this woman. I don't think she's got any better than a 3 to 1 chance of being nominated, and I almost certainly would vote elsewhere in a primary, but hey, I want Health Care, so...

But it's fucking distressing. I know a lot of people who've worked personally with Ms. Clinton, and they all assure me she's nice, personable and cool in real life. It boggles my mind then why she seems hell-bent on creating a public persona that's an almost comic caricature of a square ex-liberal baby boomer sellout parent.

(Updated to compensate for drunken misspelling last night, added a few bits too)

"We are a nation of laws, and we must obey our laws."

Wonder what Glenn Greenwald would have to say about this.

He also spotlights the role of technology, suggesting that federal money will be used to buy sensors and the like. Guard will be used to build stuff, but not to be Minutemen.

The practice of "catch and release" is over. We're gonna build a bunch of detention centers to hold people awaiting deportation.

On the other hand, we will have to have a guest worker program, so that foreigners can come work here (presumably for less than minimum wage), providing they can pass a background check.

New guest worker ID cards will employ biometric technology. A portent of things to come?

If you've been here a while, if you pay a fine and pass some tests, you can become a citizen, because people who are already connected are ok.

Marines who've been wounded in battle can be citizens too. Support our immigrant troops!

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In general, I think Bush's rhetoric is actually somewhat right on here, and if he means that "guest workers" would have the same rights and protections as a regular citizen, and not be an exploited sub-class, this is all good.

I think his base will be disappointed though. (update: sure 'nuff)

USA Today of all places has broken the news that the NSA has a massive database of domestic US phone calls. The legal authorization? None. As Glenn Greenwald put it:

We now learn that when Americans call their Aunt Millie, or their girlfriend, or their psychiatrist, or their drug counselor, or their priest or rabbi, or their lawyer, or anyone and everyone else, the Government is very interested. In fact, they are so interested that they make note of it and keep it forever, so that at any time, anyone in the Government can look at a record of every single person whom every single American ever called or from whom they received a call. It doesn't take a professional privacy advocate to find that creepy, invasive, dangerous and un-American.

I also find it worth noting how the government got this information: they asked for it, and every big telco (with the exception of Qwest) just turned over the records.

We are living in a society where the power of the State is increasingly being concentrated into a single entity (the Decider in Chief). At the same time, enormous undemocratic organizations called "Corporations" administer most of the ins and outs of our daily life, and function as both a perverse/corrupting influence and aider and abetter of wrongful State action.

It's like the worst of both worlds! This is what happens when you concentrate wealth and power, and remove checks, balances and real competition: mega-suckage. Big government and Big Business are in bed alright, tag-teaming the little guy.

UPDATE: In another perverse twise, the NSA effectively stomped out a Department of Justice investigation into their wiretapping programs by denying their lawyers security clearance. You can't make shit like this up.

Is it just me, or does anyone else want to read for themselves this 18-page letter that Mahmoud "The Passionate Persian" Ahmadinejad sent Mr. Bush?

I find it somewhat unlikely that someone who was in fact elected president would declare that "democracy has failed worldwide," as the AP led with. There's a quote a bit later on that says "Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the Liberal democratic systems," but it's quite unclear whether the subject is "democracy worldwide" or specifically our style of democracy in Iraq.

It seems to me that the press is playing along with the administration here, giving them cover for not engaging Iran in bilateral talks and, let us not forget, throwing former president Mohammad Khatami (who was a real reformer) under the bus with all that "Axis of Evil" crap, a huge softball for hardliners and clerics. One thing to remember as the war-talk with Iran ratchets up is that as an institution the media probably wants war. It makes for great television and helps them feel very important.