Demagogue

I have been truly appalled at the self-justifying, circular argument advanced by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in defense of the administration's circumvention of FISA. Earlier this week, blogger Jack Balkin at Balkinization offered this abbreviated version of Gonzales' position, which I quite enjoyed:

What we did was legal, or, in our opinion, could have been legal. Since there are arguments on both sides, we will rely on our opinion. However, we won't let a court decide the question, because then we wouldn't be able to rely on our own opinion.

We won't answer hypothetical questions about what we can do legally or constitutionally. We also won't tell you what we've actually done or plan to do; hence every question you ask about legality will be in effect a hypothetical, and therefore we can refuse to answer it.