''When the President Does it That Means That it is Not Illegal''

BILL MOYERS: Remember "The Lives of Others" - the movie that won this year's Academy Award for best foreign language film....a story of life under East Germany's secret police. The critic Roger Ebert said: "The movie is relevant today, as our government ignores habeas corpus, practices secret torture, and asks for the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on its citizens. Such tactics, he said, did not save East Germany; they destroyed it, by making it a country its most loyal citizens could no longer believe in." You want to say it couldn't happen here but we've been close before. During the cold war with the Soviet Union and then the hot war in Vietnam, a secret government mushroomed in this country. ...(transcript)

In 1975 the Select Senate Committee headed by Sen Frank Church (D-ID) began looking into allegations first reported by Seymour Hersh in the NYT and found that the CIA, NSA, FBI and other Federal Agencies had been involved in plots to assassinate foreign leaders, the illegal storage of poisons and biological warfare agents including anthrax, the warrantless opening of mail, wiretapping, other illegal intel-gathering on US citizens, the misuse of the IRS and other illegal activities on orders from the Executive Branch. One of the ways Congress responded to try and restore checks and balances was by passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, which established a secret court to oversee all domestic wiretapping activity.

This week Bill Moyers takes a look at the undoing of Congress' checks and balances put in place following the Church Committee hearings and the unprecedented expansion of Executive authority in the wake of 9-11. You can watch the entire episode online here.

Chris Matthews: Rove May Now Have To Testify

Chris Matthews:

"Well, you have to wonder about his exposure now because he has used executive privilege to protect himself from Pat Leahy and the Judiciary Committee, and Congressman Henry Waxman, both hot to trot to get him in a witness chair. ..."

"I think Henry Waxman is going to go after him now. He's not involved in any criminal proceeding like Scooter Libby is. He can't claim he's in the appellate process. He's exposed now it seems to me on the leak case. In terms of the eight US Attorneys that were fired, I think he's also exposed there. Not having the whitehouse position anymore."

Update: AP: End of the Rove: How He Spun Media *

Whitehouse Cover-up in Tillman Death?

C&L:

And the disgraceful Pat Tillman saga continues.. How’s this for “supporting the troops” and respecting their families?

Seattle Times:

The White House has refused to give Congress documents about the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman, with White House counsel Fred Fielding saying that certain papers relating to discussion of the friendly-fire shooting “implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests.” ...

Late Update: Steve Benen @ TPM has more.

Late Update: It gets worse. Much Worse.

TPMmuckraker: Was Pat Tillman murdered?

[A]ccording to the AP, medical examiners questioned the close proximity of three bullet holes in Tillman's forehead, fired from ten yards away. There are questions -- which will be difficult to hear, considering Tillman's heroism -- that Tillman was not well-liked within his unit. Other elements of the circumstances surrounding Tillman's death appear difficult to reconcile with the friendly-fire ruling -- which came after the Army announced that Tillman died in combat: