The probable cause is communicating with known terrorists. You have no right to do that. Otherwise, you have nothing to worry about.

If it’s true that US Atty jobs were jeopardized by a failure to prosecute enough democrats, or retained because of prosecutions brought in time for elections, that’s obviously unethical.

We can disagree over whether or not that’s actually what happened, but I would think that we can at least agree that if the facts are as alleged then it was unethical.

There’s actually a lot of concern among the left and civil libertarian liberals over Clinton. The Mister wasn’t exactly flawless on that score; and many people think that his and her defenses of the principle of a strong executive are evidence of his violating rule of law and her intent to. There’s quite a raging debate over this issue on the left, and I don’t foresee it simmering down, given the abuses of the Bush administration.

The last thing people on the left want is another president that disregards rule of law.

And, if the wiretapping allegations are true, I’m right there with them, despite being a Clintonista.

Finally, there was a thread on Volokh on the legality of the action if true. The short version is that listening to cell phones was illegal, listening to cordless phones wasn’t.

Although there is not one iota of evidence that this program has ever been used to violate anyone’s civil rights

My civil right is against being spied on by the government.

The penalty against McDermott was 60k; the rest was legal fees. Nitpicking aside, he broke the law, so he was properly given the whammo. W/re/to Clinton, even assuming the truth, it isn’t clear she broke the law – there are at least two other facts that we’d need to know if she violated the law (1. that the conversations intercepted were on cell phones; and 2. that she “used” the communications per the statute). Nevertheless, even though her actions may not have been illegal, they may have been deeply unethical (much like the firing of the U.S. Attys: probably not illegal, but deeply unethical)

W/re/to the distinction between private and government action: that doesn’t strike me as especially important. A broken law is a broken law, regardless of whether you’re on the clock. And the FISA statute violated by the Bush administration contemplates that any violation will be by a government actor. It’s a “misuse of power” criminal law. (practically by definition, you or I can’t violate its terms – the only one that can violate the law is someone that should have obtained a FISA warrant according to proper procedure and failed to)

How does she bug me? Let me count the ways:

1. Bad land deals

2. Travelgate

3. Socilalized medicine

4. Her recent blatant call for socialism

5. Her continual flip-flopping on a variety of issues

6. Her lying about why she flip-flopped

7. Her absolutely ruthless drive for power

8. Her cynical sucking-up to the far left

I could go on with this for an hour. To misquote the bard: What’s in a name? A snake by any other name would still slither.

I don’t like her because she is generic, evil politician incarnate. She lies, steals, knows whats best for you, hates you, looks down on you, wants to manage your money and power for you, will do and say whatever is the best at the moment without regard for anything besides consolidating power, she lies, i wouldn’t know who she was if she didn’t forgive her husband for getting hummers on the clock while I pay him. She panders. She’s everyone’s ally and no ones. She might win. It will reflect even more poorly on us than Bush’s elections. We will be every other state in the world’s little bitch, as if we aren’t already, and us taxpayers will foot the bill. She will grind up our freedom and squeeze it all into a big wad o cash for the fed to hold out infront of us like a carrot on a stick infront of a donkey. Fuck that.

Define “not prosecuting enough Democrats.” If the US attorneys in question were showing bias in go after Republicans and not Dems, then no the decision to throw them out for “not prosecuting enough Demcorats” is not unethical.

But I don’t see that as being the issue. The issue here was purely political, as I see it. The replaced US attorneys were liberal, and their replacements had an philosophy more fitting to how conservatives view the law. Since US attorneys are political appointments, politics is a natural consideration. Unless you think the President is somehow obliged to keep people in federal positions who don’t do the job the way he thinks it should be done.

If you don’t like that, argue for removing US attorneys from the pool of positions for which the President appoints personnel.