David Corn: "The Bushies--with Dick Cheney beating the drum--are mounting the most extensive power-grab seen in decades. Yes, there is a war. Yes, Abraham Lincoln did suspend habeus corpus. Still, this band is fiercely challenging the general constitutional balance, and, worse, they are doing it in secrecy. Consequently, they are trying to prevent citizens from seeing and debating the arguably unconstitutional actions they are taking, supposedly in the name of protecting the citizenry. This is hardly traditionalism; this is radicalism."

David confuses judicial activism, done by judges in the judicial branch, with executive activism, the kind of power grab all executives and bureaucrats seem prone to. But the Bush power grab on survielliance is a small mistake -- because there is too little monitoring of the program, not because it is maybe not fully legal.

The Dems should be pushing to have an oversight committee review all the data mining requests, and especially have detailed records kept of who looked for what info; with frequent internal audits. Best with audits from different agencies.