More on wiretapping, the Protect America Act...

Quick list of articles for this week's 'toon:

• See Charles Babington on the Protect America Act, which may effectively "grant the attorney general the ability to wiretap anybody, any place, any time without court review, without any checks and balances." Apparently, the Dems were in a hurry to get their August vacations started and didn't think this sounded all that important. But, hey, it's not like the administration just acknowledged that the little domestic surveillance programs that they'd previously admitted to were actually part of a gigantic spying operation involving data-mining and eavesdropping on (possibly) millions of ordinary Americans, right?
  
  Unbelievable.
  
  Aziz Huq teaches us the 3-step dance that helped the administration push this bill through Congress.
  
  
• Check out Joe Conason on our fading democracy, John Dean on a historical perspective on Bush's handling of free speech issues, and Joseph A. Palermo, who cites Chalmers Johnson when making the statement that we may be one terror attack away from a form of military dictatorship.
  
  
• Here's a disturbing trend that you may want to think about before you go out to buy your iPhone: backdoors in all your favorite products for the government to spy on you. The possibilities are limitless. How about tiny microphones on to-go cups for your Starbucks lattes? Mini data-recorders in Trojan condoms?
  
  And what the hell is up with Apple? This is the second time I've read about something like this with them...