By all accounts, his efforts to aggrandize power for the executive at the expense of the courts and the Congress have been more intense and more offensive than even those of John Yoo, Mr. Addington’s mole, if you will, in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (the internal legal “think tank” at the DOJ). (And let us not forget President Bush and ex-Attorney General Gonzales who enabled Mr. Addington’s walk on the wild side of civil liberties erosion.)

And when that book never gets written, someone needs to devote an entire chapter to the ideological friction between Addington and Jack Goldsmith, Harvard Law professor, conservative academic luminary, former head of the OLC and a political ally of James Comey.

Though this is not new news, Goldsmith’s new book is a must read for anyone studying the ideological interplay over civil liberties and the separation of powers among conservative lawyers in the early Bush administration.

Goldsmith writes:

“As I absorbed the opinions, I concluded that some were deeply flawed: sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the President,” Goldsmith writes, referring to Justice Department memoranda issued in the two years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “I was astonished, and immensely worried, to discover that some of our most important counterterrorism policies rested on severely damaged legal foundations.”

And this:

“After 9/11, they and other top officials in the administration dealt with FISA the way they dealt with other laws they didn’t like: they blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations,” Goldsmith wrote, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs spying by U.S. agencies within the United States.

He also describes Addington as the chief legal architect of the “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” the warrantless NSA snooping that bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The Goldsmith Addington revelations are kind of old news, but let me point out three ultra-salient points that have yet to make the coverage.

First, Mr. Addington works for the vice president, proving once again that Mr. Cheney’s office has been a corrosive epicenter for counter-civil liberties policies in the Bush administration. That either shows lack of leadership on Mr. Bush’s part, or a more insidious desire in the Oval Office to cut constitutional corners in the name of “restoring” (scare quotes) executive power post Watergate. Either option sucks.

Second, Jack Goldsmith is no civil liberties white knight. For the legally inclined among you, I suggest taking a gander at his 2003 article in the Harvard Law Review: Curtis A. Bradley & Jack Goldsmith, Congressional Authorization and the Use of Force, 118 HARV. L. REV. 2047, 2107 (2005). His construction of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF, against al Qaeda and its helpmates is awfully broad.

Third, perhaps the most obnoxious thing in this whole sordid mess is the fact that Addington used his legal chops to subvert longstanding federal legal institutions. As a lawyer, and especially as a government lawyer, Mr. Addington had an ethical obligation to follow the laws and the Constitution, not to “push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop,” as Goldsmith quotes him. It’s one thing to zealously represent your client; it’s something completely other to attempt to bend or break the law in order to allow your client to engage in criminality. What Mr. Addington did, according to Goldsmith, could easily fit the bill.

Finally, fourth, just take a look at the guy. Why is it that all of these ideologues look like ex-hippies? Wait, don’t answer that.

And, hey, for any historian out there in the ether: hear my plea. The Addington bio. Do it.

The recently filed briefs argue strenuously that the tribunals and their review process fall far short by, among other shortcomings, failing to give detainees access to the evidence needed to rebut the government’s charges. A brief filed by retired senior military officers calls the process “little more than a facade” that violates basic principles of military law.

Perhaps the most striking of all the briefs is the one filed by Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania. The withdrawal of habeas corpus, he tells the justices, “is anathema to fundamental liberty interests,” and the combatant status review tribunal process is so deeply flawed that it “demands robust habeas review.”

Specter was chairman of the Judiciary Committee when the Military Commissions Act was passed. He was, in fact, one of the 65 senators who voted for it.

The best bit in the Post story on the IG investigation is this:

Fine’s office has also separately expanded a probe into whether senior Gonzales aides improperly considered partisan affiliations when reviewing applicants for nonpolitical career positions. As part of that inquiry, Fine sent hundreds of questionnaires in the past week to former Justice Department job applicants.

In the questionnaires, Fine asks applicants whether they were quizzed by political appointees about their party affiliation, favorite politicians and judges, voting history, campaign contributions, and views on the death penalty and terrorism, according to a copy of the Aug. 24 questionnaire obtained by The Washington Post. Recipients are also asked to say whether White House aides participated in the interviews and to confirm if they were asked “what kind of conservative you were (law and order; social; fiscal).”

Federal agents spied on the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for several years after his assassination in 1968, according to newly released documents that reveal the FBI worried about her following in the footsteps of the civil rights icon.

In memos that reveal Coretta Scott King being closely followed by the government, the FBI noted concern that she might attempt “to tie the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement.”

At the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress yesterday, panelists discussing the balance between security and freedom lashed out at Democratic leaders for not standing up to the White House. “These are matters of principle,” said Mark Agrast, a senior fellow at the center. “You don’t temporize.”

The American Civil Liberties Union is running Internet advertisements depicting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) as sheep.

“Bush wanted more power to eavesdrop on ordinary Americans, and we just followed along. I guess that’s why they call us the Democratic leadersheep,” say the two farm animals in the ad, referring to Congress’s passage of legislation granting Bush a six-month extension and expansion of his warrantless wiretapping program.

What the article (and the Democrats) sort of miss is that the problem here isn’t just fearmongering on the part of the GOP—though they certainly are guilty of that—it’s the notion that somehow getting into the weeds of procedural protections and safeguards against abuse on counter-terrorism legislation is wimpy.

I certainly concede the deep internal schisms in the Democratic Party, yet I do not concede that those fractures are any deeper than among the Republicans. What is a shame is that the Democrats allow themselves to be drawn into this false dichotomy between protecting civil liberties and protecting national security. Case in point, Rep. Rahm Emmanuel:

But political fear still hovers over any legislation that touches on the fight against terrorism, which, for Democrats, may be the new third rail of politics.

“We can do this, but you have to keep in mind Republicans care more about catching Democrats than catching terrorists,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “They have spent years taking Roosevelt’s notion that we have nothing to fear but fear itself and given us nothing but fear.”

At the end of the day, the only responsible course of action is to damn the torpedoes, use the power of the majority, and push through sound counter-terrorism policies that hew to our constitutional tradition and liberal heritage. If conservative Democrats can’t keep their seats after doing so, well, that’s the price you pay for the party you choose.

Somehow, however, I don’t think that’s going to happen. If there’s one lesson that the Democrats haven’t learned from the GOP it’s that equivocation—not attention to civil liberties—is the real third rail of American politics. And a majority that acts like a cowering, flip-floppy, ineffectual minority won’t be a majority for long. It’s worth noting that the Democrats took back the Congress in 2006 even though the Republicans ran a typical 9/11 campaign and most Dems voted against the Military Commissions Act.

In short, compromise=bad. Doing what’s right, regardless of the consequences=priceless.

Irrespective of Jordan’s guilt or innocence, one has to wonder why the military cannot put a satisfactory end to this national shame. There is a heap of evidence suggesting that the abuse we witnessed in those photographs was the logical extension of official military interrogation policy. Yet, nothing—not the Fay or Taguba reports, not the Graner prosecution, and certainly not the Jordan trial—has given the American people the answers that they need and deserve. Let us hope the last word on Abu Ghraib is not “reprimand.”

As we know, much of the case against Jordan foundered on serious procedural missteps by the investigating officers, namely their failure to read the Lt. Col. his rights before questioning (both Fay and Taguba, inexplicably, made this mistake). Moreover, the trial, which was painted by the media as a step toward closure for both the military and public, also completely neglected the burning question in the case: how did interrogation techniques from Gitmo find their way over to the cradle of civilization?

Although there were brief mentions in Jordan’s trial of connections between Abu Ghraib and the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, no criminal court has explored how or why interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay migrated to Iraq. Detainees in the Abu Ghraib photographs appeared in situations that mirrored tactics used by senior interrogators on one of the most important detainees held at Guantanamo Bay after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Today, accountability has extended only to 11 low-ranking enlisted soldiers. The top dog, of course, is a Corporal Graner, who has been described as the ringleader of the abuse. And yet, evidence continues to circulate suggesting a systemic link between the two theaters—the gloves came off in Cuba, and then they came off in exactly the same way in Baghdad.

And, then, there are the common personnel ties. Major General George Miller, seconded from Gitmo to Baghdad to get some hustle going in counter-intel and interrogation. Stephen Cambone, Rumsfeld’s first deputy in charge of intelligence and a recurrent name in the coverage of the scandal. The president and his men, and especially outgoing Attorney General Gonzales: all sought express authority for coercive interrogation amounting to torture.

If the Jordan “conviction” is the coda to the abominations of those terrible early months of the Iraq insurgency, that’s something of a contrast with the closest analogue, My Lai, in which at least some blame stuck to the responsible parties.

Among those who are said to be under serious consideration are Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, whom Bush picked to serve as acting attorney general after Gonzales’s Sept. 17 departure; George J. Terwilliger III, a former deputy attorney general; former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson; Michael B. Mukasey, former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York; and Laurence H. Silberman, a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

And, of course, there’s Chertoff and Larry Thompson. Given the Katrina anniversary, however, timing for Chertoff seems awful inauspicious:

Colleagues said Mr. Chertoff was especially eager for the appointment. Although lawmakers saw him as a leading candidate, several Democrats suggested he would come under unflattering scrutiny if nominated because of his role in the government’s initially disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina two years ago and his involvement at the Justice Department in legal issues related to interrogation of terror suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks.