From Dale Franks, at the end of a lengthy post concurring-in-part and dissenting-in-part with a post by Jon Henke:

[O]ur choice is between Republicans who are willing to easily betray our principles in order to fight the Global War on Terror, and Democrats who are unwilling to fight a Global War on Terror at all.

And, the counterpoint from Jon Henke:

Remember: the people who told us that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay were all Taliban, captured on the battlefield or otherwise terrorists are the same people who swear, really, that the domestic surveillance program is “solely for intercepting communications of suspected al Qaeda members or related terrorist groups.”

We can trust them, because they would never mislead us.

But, hey, we get to keep our tax cuts!

Love Monkey has apparently been canned after three episodes. It’s a shame, since I thought Tuesday’s episode was the best so far—and, like I said before, it was nice seeing Tom Cavanaugh and Judy Greer again.

Shorter Tom Smith: I don’t know whether or not the president’s domestic spying program is actually, you know, legal or constitutional, but since members of Congress sometimes put electoral considerations ahead of the law, the concerns of the elected representatives of the people of the United States are to be completely dismissed, because a few executive branch political appointees (and I) think that the program initiated by their boss is somehow consistent with the Constitution under some sort of complete hand-waving, “anything goes” Article II doctrine that makes the court’s interpretation of the Commerce Clause in Wickard v. Filburn seem like a restraint on congressional authority.

Shorter Jeff Goldstein and Wall Street Journal editorial board: Separation of powers is for idiots.

One more thing: the first person to reply with “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” needs to come up with an argument, not a slogan.

Update: A perhaps-related post from Venkat at Begging to Differ.

A former student at Millsaps asked me to help her out with avoiding retaking basic stats in her master’s program today, so I had to go hunting for all the information, including the catalog description. Weirdly enough, not only is my course website still lurking around at Millsaps, but I am still listed in the 2005–06 catalog as a professor in the department (see page 25 of the PDF). If Google (which is probably sentient at this point) thinks I still work there, does that mean I actually do and just don’t know it?

In other academic news, I just landed an interview at a liberal arts college in the Midwest for a one-year position in American politics and political behavior. Jobs, as they say, are good, and jobs higher up in the USN&WR rankings from Millsaps are priceless—even if there should be giant confidence error bounds on the rankings.