I’ve got news for this administration. We Americans aren’t stupid. We know we have enemies, and we know that not all of them are outside our borders. Indeed, some of them get to hold news conferences any time they so desire. Fortunately, they still can’t tell reporters what to report or publishers what to publish.

If you haven’t read the editorial in yesterday’s New York Times, “Torture and the Attorneys General,” I recommend that you do so. If nothing more, read the first three paragraphs. They tell you all you need to know about what will be Bush’s legacy and that of the congresses that cleared a path and rallied him on: restrictions of civil liberties, torture redefined, the Geneva Conventions repudiated, illegal detention camps installed, the fundamental human rights of foreigners revoked, justice politicized, all to broaden the government’s options for accumulating power and waging war on the oil-rich Middle East.