Glenn Greenwald "fisks" the Shields and Brooks Clown Show on the national surveillance state

I often post the video of the PBS Newshour Political Wrap segment from Fridays because it provides a good glimpse of the conservative and liberal version of Beltway Village conventional wisdom of the moment. Every now and then, Mark Shields will suddenly aware from the semi-somnolent condition of torpor in which he usually functions in this segment and say something actually insightful.

I didn't catch any of that happening on the 05/27/2011 edition:



Glenn Greenwald in Establishment thought and the War on Terror Salon 05/27/2011 looks at the happy acceptance of the renewal of the PATRIOT Act substantially unchanged by both conservative David "Bobo" Brooks and Sleepy Mark. His comment on Bobo's endorsement of the surveillance state:

Our Leaders know secret things that we don't that make them know better [according to Bobo], and justify their complete abandonment of what they promise when campaigning (and as I've said many times, if that's really what happened -- if Obama got into office and learned Secret Things that showed him that his criticisms of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies were misguided -- then don't he and his defenders owe the GOP a serious apology for the inaccurate harsh criticisms they spewed all those years?).

His comment on Sleepy Mark's endorsement of the surveillance state:

Now that we killed bin Laden [according to Sleepy Mark], we need civil-liberties-eroding measures like the Patriot Act more than ever. The notion that the death of bin Laden would trigger a winding down in the War on Terror -- as though bin Laden was the cause of those policies rather than pretext for them -- will prove to be one of the more absurd notions advanced on such matters. [emphasis in original]

Tags: david brooks, glenn greenwald, mark shields, patriot act