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Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a way bigger deal than the outcome of the Massachusetts election. 

Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

…

Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, an author of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, called the ruling “a terrible mistake.”

“Ignoring important principles of judicial restraint and respect for precedent, the Court has given corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns,” said Mr. Feingold, a Democrat.

Giving corporations the right to fund election campaigns is an absurdity.  This kind of ruling is what I feared most following Bush’s Supreme Court appointments. 
 
Corporations have been around far longer than our country, and our founding fathers were very wary of extending privileges to economic entities.  They were way more concerned with living, breathing human beings.  The Bill of Rights was written for the benefit of people, not companies – and there lies the ultimate irony of this ruling. 
 
The driving force behind getting this case to the Supreme Court came from The Right, and they are the faction that, when it comes to appointing Supreme Court Justices, scream for “strict constructionists.”  Nowhere in the Constitution are there any rights granted to corporations.  Why?  Because corporations can amass huge quantities of money and they can live forever.  Our founders did not approve of giving such entities a voice in electing representatives of the people, because they knew that corporate contributors would fund campaigns of candidates that, once elected, would satisfy the wants and needs of business, not people.
 
Goldman Sachs is huge and they reported $13.4 billion in profits today.  They should not be allowed to fund the campaigns of congressmen because their interests and the interests of your average American are vastly different.  As a result of today’s ruling, one huge corporation like Goldman Sachs will be able to blast the grassroots campaigns of reform candidates clean out of the water. 
 
The Plutocracy just got way bigger today.  Say goodbye to the Republic, because it’s a thing of the past.  It’s a sad day in the history of our country.  A travesty.

Via Harper’s, watch Condi respond to questions from Stanford students about the legality of waterboarding.

At about 3:50 into the video she says “And we didn’t torture anybody here either,” to which the student responds, “We tortured them in Guantanamo Bay.”  Obviously agitated, she responds with “No dear, you’re wrong.”  A minute later she tells the student to do his homework first, even though she’s the one who appears to have blown off all her assignments in Constitutional Law.

Here’s how she responds to a question from the next student:

“The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention Against Torture.  So that’s — and by the way, I didn’t authorize anything.  I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency that they had policy authorizations subject to the Justice Department’s clearance.”

That’s a lot of words for, “It’s not my fault. I was just doing what I was told.”

And about the authority of the president?  You’ve got to love this Nixonian response:

“By definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture.”

Harper’s dissects her responses and points out how she implicated herself in conspiracy to torture.  Read it.

As of late, most of the news media has been reporting on our current financial crisis, and it is very important; however, I think it is also important to to point out that as recessions and depressions come and go, and as corporate greedheads come and go, (most not to where I would like to see them go), and as income taxes go up and down, we usually manage to hold on to our basic rights as citizens in this country of ours that is governed not by a king or despot, but by “We the People.”

I said usually…

On Monday our government released what were known as the Bush Torture Memos, but the scope of the nine memos released on Monday is much broader than torture.  Here’s a clip from the New York Times article about the memos.  (my emphasis added).

The secret legal opinions issued by Bush administration lawyers after the Sept. 11 attacks included assertions that the president could use the nation’s military within the United States to combat terrorism suspects and to conduct raids without obtaining search warrants.

That opinion was among nine that were disclosed publicly for the first time Monday by the Justice Department, in what the Obama administration portrayed as a step toward greater transparency.

The opinions reflected a broad interpretation of presidential authority, asserting as well that the president could unilaterally abrogate foreign treaties, ignore any guidance from Congress in dealing with detainees suspected of terrorism, and conduct a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants.

…

The Oct. 23 memorandum also said that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” It added that “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”

Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty said that in addition, the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bars the military from domestic law enforcement operations, would pose no obstacle to the use of troops in a domestic fight against terrorism suspects. They reasoned that the troops would be acting in a national security function, not as law enforcers.

In another of the opinions, Mr. Yoo argued in a memorandum dated Sept. 25, 2001, that judicial precedents approving deadly force in self-defense could be extended to allow for eavesdropping without warrants.   [WTF?]

Still another memo, issued in March 2002, suggested that Congress lacked any power to limit a president’s authority to transfer detainees to other countries, a practice known as rendition that was widely used by Mr. Bush.

We here at harikari have been ranting about Bush’s heinous abuse of power since we went on line in 2005.  These memos prove that we and everyone else who made our views known to anyone who would listen were right when we said that George W. Bush was not abiding by The Constitution he swore not once, but twice, to uphold as President of the United States.  These memos prove that he and the political hacks he hired to staff his Justice Department were stretching legal opinion farther than any reasonably educated U.S. Citizen would ever dare.  These memos essentially argue that the president is above the law and that he answers to no one.  Simply put, that he is a king.

This is the issue that we should be discussing.

Obama knew of these memos before his his speech to a joint session of congress, and that is why he felt it was necessary to say:

To overcome extremism, we must also be vigilant in upholding the values our troops defend, because there is no force in the world more powerful than the example of America.  And that is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists… because living our values doesn’t make us weaker.  It makes us safer, and it makes us stronger.

And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture.  We can make that commitment here tonight.

And both sides of the aisle stood up and gave him one of their loudest and longest rounds of applause.

That applause was an affirmation that no matter what the outcome in Iraq, George W. Bush will go down in history as one of the worst presidents ever because he willingly undermined our Constitution and took away our rights.  He was NOT working FOR the people, he was working AGAINST the people.

He was, in effect, a tyrant.

Today’s column by Paul Krugman exactly mirrors my thoughts about how government officials must be held accountable for their wrongdoings in order to deter their successors from doing the same things.  Without checks on our elected officials, especially in the Executive Branch, we cannot preserve our democracy.

From the column:

By my count, at least six important government agencies experienced major scandals over the past eight years — in most cases, scandals that were never properly investigated. And then there was the biggest scandal of all: Does anyone seriously doubt that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation into invading Iraq?

Why, then, shouldn’t we have an official inquiry into abuses during the Bush years?

One answer you hear is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldn’t there be some penalty for the Bush administration’s politicization of every aspect of government?

…

During the Reagan years, the Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and when the White House finally changed hands the political and media establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice it’s giving Mr. Obama: let sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off — which isn’t too surprising when you bear in mind that Mr. Bush actually hired some of those conspirators.

Meanwhile, about Mr. Obama: while it’s probably in his short-term political interests to forgive and forget, next week he’s going to swear to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That’s not a conditional oath to be honored only when it’s convenient.

…

And to protect and defend the Constitution, a president must do more than obey the Constitution himself; he must hold those who violate the Constitution accountable. So Mr. Obama should reconsider his apparent decision to let the previous administration get away with crime. Consequences aside, that’s not a decision he has the right to make.

I’d planned on writing some more of my own thoughts about this, but I ended up in an email exchange with  N.J. Barnes (another harikari editor) about it, so I’m just going to post the emails and call it an open forum. 

N.J. Barnes:  I’d love to see an investigation but it has to avoid any suggestion of partisanship. Independent commission(s) empowered to examine the whole issue of torture decisions and illegal wiretapping and all the rest (and recommend whether laws were actually broken) should be established headed by a respected retired federal judge.

I should add that we just had an example of how difficult it is to bring charges. The Bush Justice Dept hack who blatantly lied to Congress under oath by saying he didn’t let ideology or politics influence his hiring practices. Now the Justice IG has said he clearly did. Yet federal prosecutors refrain from prosecuting for reasons that are not clear to me.  When it’s that blatant and they won’t do anything, what chance is there on issues where the line between law-breaking and executive prerogatives is blurred?

Brad:  They are untouchables. 
 
George Washington, in his farewell address, warned about these types of assholes and the damage they would do to our democracy.
 
Judges have already ruled that the wiretaps were illegal and that members of our military and/or intelligence agencies did in fact TORTURE people.  Again, laws broken both national and international.
 
perhaps we must wait for international courts to step in.
 
not likely

N.J. Barnes:  With all due respect, the courts have mostly deferred to the Bush administration on this issue and so has Congress, to its everlasting shame. And this is not an issue that gets most Americans excited either. Most of them would say they’d rather be safe than free of government intrusion. That’s even worse news.

Brad:  It all started with the politicization of the Justice Department.  Politicizing it is against the law.  That’s where this all began, and that is where the investigations, if there are to be any, must begin. 
 
Obama appointed Dawn Johnsen as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and she has been a consistent critic of Bush’s Justice Department and a staunch defender of The Constitution.  After she’s taken over and had some time to review what her predecessors had been doing, she may find things that Obama cannot ignore.  And lets remember, he too has been a harsh critic and is a constitutional lawyer.  Maybe, just maybe… some of this will see the light of day.
 
As for checks and balances, they are built in to our system of government.  The problem falls mainly on Congress  – a Republican Congress that was in control for six of the worst eight years our country has ever seen.  They were the initial problem.  They followed King George’s orders and never “checked” him even though some of them KNEW he was breaking laws and had grabbed too much power.    That power grab started with Cheney and his remaking of the VP office that had executive control over the Justice Dept (no longer independent) through his ideological appointments.
 
R’s in Congress kept their mouths shut for fear of political reprisal:  They would be taken off committees, lose funding for state projects, and lose of campaign funds, etc. 
 
All in all it was a despicable period in our nation’s history that nobody in Congress can be proud of. 
 
I salute those who did open their mouths once and while.  Too bad their voices weren’t heard by a public cowed into fearing for their lives by the false rhetoric of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/et. al. and echoed by a compliant press corps.

N.J. Barnes:  All that may be true but in the end it comes to the same thing: when the people who are supposed to do the people’s business whether its lawyers in the Justice Dept or senators in the US Congress fail in their duty to protect and uphold the Constitution  by fettering a rogue, ideology and power-driven executive branch, there is little or no accountability. 
 
It will all be defended as “we did what we thought was right to defend the American people from attack after 9/11″ and that misleading and deceptive phrase will protect them from legal sanction. The best we can hope for is that they will be shamed by independently constituted examinations of what occurred – although I doubt even that is possible.
 
I totally agree that the wrong doing spread across every facet of government, not least in environmental policy.
 
Let’s hope we can avoid another nightmare like this one.

Hey you other harikari editors, join in the discussion!

It’s open to readers too.  Leave some comments… let us know you are out there.

From a column by Jonathan Turley in The Los Angeles Times: 

In his [Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey's] twisting of legal principles, the attorney general has succeeded in creating a perfect paradox. Under Mukasey’s Paradox, lawyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president — and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers.

…

Mukasey’s Paradox appears designed to play tricks with Congress. Its origins date back to Mukasey’s confirmation hearings, when he first denied knowing what waterboarding was and then (when it was defined for him) refused to recognize it as torture. In fact, it is not only a crime under U.S. law, it is a well-defined war crime under international law.

The problem for Mukasey was that if he admitted waterboarding was a crime, then it was a crime that had been authorized by the president of the United States — an admission that would trigger calls for both a criminal investigation and impeachment. Mukasey’s confirmation was facing imminent defeat over his refusal to answer the question when Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) suddenly rescued him, guaranteeing that he would not have to answer it.

…

A paradox is a statement that seems true but yields a contradiction or a dual truth. When reduced to its purest form, Mukasey’s Paradox is that government officials cannot violate the law — but that because executive privilege is also a law, it’s sometimes necessary to violate the law in order to uphold the law.

This is fleshed out in much greater detail with examples.  Read it all here.

And if you’d like to do some more extensive reading about how the Bush Administration has used the claim of executive privilege to evade laws we used to think were pretty clear and strongly ingrained in American society, check out Scott Horton’s essay in the March 2008 issue of Harper’s Magazine titled “VOTE MACHINE – How Republicans hacked the Justice Department.”

The American system of democracy has many defenses, and the Bush Administration overcame each of them in turn.  It was not enough simply to control the bureaucracy.  High officials as well had to understand that their function was not to enforce the law but rather to express the will of the president.

…

But the Bush Justice Department demonstrated its power in supporting a partisan electoral agenda and in outfitting the executive with extraordinary and extra-constitutional powers.  Is it realistic to think that any new occupant of the White House would surrender those powers?  The American historical experience on this point is clear:  once a power or prerogative is successfully asserted by a president, his successors have generally guarded that power carefully, whether they make actual use of it or not.

…

Our Constitution provides a mechanism for countering transformational excess, but the people’s representatives thus far appear to have decided that the impolite process of impeachment is only for presidents who have affairs.  Given this failure of will, we must be prepared to accept a changed system in which the will of the people is subsumed by good manners and fearful politics.  As long as this new democracy prevails, little will matter beyond the will of the president.

So vote for change this coming November and then demand it of your newly elected officials.

It was in the late 1940s when, as a pre-teen,  I first heard the word “bigotry.”  Washington State had restrictive liquor laws.  No Sunday sales.  You could not carry a drink in a bar.  If you wanted to change tables you had to call for a barmaid (hey, it was 60 years ago) to take your beer to your new location.  Few places had liquor by the drink.  I can remember my folks going to the old Dick Parker’s dance hall in north Seattle where they would set a bottle of liquor under the table, order set-ups from the house and enjoy an evening of dancing to Duke Ellington’s band. 

Well, an initiative was placed on the ballot to liberalize the laws and create a “Class H” license whereby liquor by the drink would be readily available.  Although I was a constant captive to the church’s message that this was the work of Satan I was struck by the theme of the pro-initiative forces who called the church groups bigots, which they defined as “I don’t like it so you can’t have it!”  The initiative passed and some still contend that Satan prevailed.  They have a hard time separating “secular” and “Satan.”

Yesterday we had Huckabee echoing the illustrious Ellen Craswell in his statement to the effect that the Bible trumps the Constitution.  The evangelicals captured the Republican party in Washington a few years back and Craswell was nominated to run against Gary Locke–his good fortune.  She repeatedly proclaimed that she would use the Bible as her guide if there were a conflict with the Constitution.  She was trounced.  Huckabee’s religious belief that the wife should be subservient to the husband should make him a good target down the line. 

One of my favorite defining court rulings was by the California Supreme Court when it ruled that a school board, which had banned a book from its district libraries because “it offended Christian values,” had acted unconstitutionally.  It noted that books could be deemed inappropriate but not on the basis of religious considerations.

All of this is an introduction to the God-O-Meter  Earlier today on MSNBC I viewed an interview about it.  Go to the site and start wondering who the bigots are in this country.

H. L. Mencken noted:  Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority.  The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right  and what is wrong.  All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them.  The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others.  His culture is based on “I am not too sure.” 

Here is a part of a rant by David Michael Green posted on CommonDreams.org that you really should read:

Regressives like to call people like me Bush-haters, and so it is important to address that claim before proceeding, because the entire intent of hurling that label at the president’s critics is to undermine their credibility. If you simply hate the man, they imply, you’re not rational, and your critiques can be dismissed. But it isn’t that simple – not by a long shot. First, it should be noted that the regressive right is far wider a phenomenon than just one person. It currently includes an entire executive branch administration, almost (and, just a year ago, more than) half of Congress, a majority of the Supreme Court and probably a majority of the lower federal courts, a biased-to-the-point-of-being-a-joke mainstream media, and tons of lobbyists, think tanks and profitable industries.

But as to George W. Bush, himself, I suspect it’s quite fair to say that most Americans and even most progressives did not originally despise or loathe him. I didn’t. I certainly didn’t admire the guy, nor did I think he was remotely prepared to be president of the United States. (Nor, by the way, was I particularly impressed with Al Gore in 2000.) Bush campaigned as a center-right pragmatist (a “compassionate conservative”, in his words), much as his father had been, and I expected that’s how he would govern if elected. You know, more embarrassing most of the time than truly destructive.

I mention all this because it is important to note what has – and what has not – been responsible for my/our anger, and to make clear that attempts to dismiss that anger as some Bush-hating bias or predisposition are false, a ploy to destroy the messenger when one doesn’t care for the message he’s carrying. If Bush had governed like he campaigned I’m sure I would have disliked him, but neither hated him nor his policies, nor experienced the rage that I feel about what he’s done to the country and the world. Frankly, my feelings toward another center-right Bush presidency would have likely been largely the same as my feelings toward the center-right Clinton presidency which preceded it.

But he hasn’t governed anywhere near to how he campaigned, and he wasn’t even elected properly, and I do in fact feel huge anger at the damage done. Moreover, I cannot for the life of me imagine how anyone – even conservatives – could feel differently. Even the wealthy, to whose interests this presidency is so wholly devoted, have to sleep at night. Even they have children who will inherit a broken country existing in an environmentally and politically hostile world, though no doubt they figure that big enough fences, mean enough private armies, and loads of central air conditioning will insulate them from the damage.

Followed by a litany of nauseating offenses.  Read it all here.

It’s too bad that Romney’s “Faith in America” speech is even necessary, but he felt pressured into it and delivered it yesterday.

Here’s what he got right:

Today, I wish to address a topic which I believe is fundamental to America’s greatness: our religious liberty.

…I am an American running for President. I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.

“Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.

“As Governor, I tried to do the right as best I knew it, serving the law and answering to the Constitution. I did not confuse the particular teachings of my church with the obligations of the office and of the Constitution – and of course, I would not do so as President. I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law.

…A President must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States.

…Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.

…No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith.

…We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion.

Anyone familiar with the U.S. Constitution knows all that should go without saying.  We should hear similar statements from all the candidates, not just Romney.  (Are you listening Mr. Huckabee?)

What he got wrong:

“Given our grand tradition of religious tolerance and liberty, some wonder whether there are any questions regarding an aspiring candidate’s religion that are appropriate. I believe there are.

…When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God.

…no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.

But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

…Perhaps the most important question to ask a person of faith who seeks a political office, is this: does he share these American values: the equality of human kind, the obligation to serve one another, and a steadfast commitment to liberty?

…Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me. And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion – rather, we welcome our nation’s symphony of faith.

The common thread through all those statements is that he excludes “the faithless” as if agnostics and atheists are second-class citizens not worthy of his attention.

Is the religion of an aspiring candidate an issue we should question?  I think not, but obviously many millions think otherwise.  Again, read the Constitution – it’s not an issue.

If he became president he would make a promise to God?  So when it gets right down to it, if God and the citizens of America are in disagreement, who does he serve?

Can a movement of conscience speak to non-religious people?  Is he saying they don’t have consciences?

When this country was formed, it was for the most part made up of Christians and Deists.  Since then, our country has absorbed people from all around the world, and they’ve all brought with them their own religions – what Romney calls a “Symphony of Faith.”  Let’s run with that metaphor for a second.  If everything is in balance, the symphony sounds great.  Occasionally the violins dominate, sometimes the woodwinds, sometimes the brass, sometimes the percussion.  But what if one voice always dominated?  What if all we ever heard were trumpets and trombones at 120 decibels?  That would drive many out of the hall, even some of the concertgoers who also played brass instruments would get sick of it.  So tempering the religious displays in the public square is not necessarily about removing any acknowledgement of God, it’s about balancing it all out so that no one religion dominates.

Oh, and secularism is not a religion.  I can’t believe he even said that.  Maybe he had W read his speech and asked him for suggestions.

And about that “most important question to ask a person of faith.”  He can’t ask an atheist the same question?  Does he think they aren’t qualified to answer it?  Probably not since they don’t fall into the group he refers to as his allies.

It’s not hard to guess how the non-believers will respond to his speech. 

So how will the Christian Republicans respond?  Can they accept a Mormon as their candidate for president?

They should be able to, but I’m betting they won’t.

From John Nichols’ latest column describing remarks by Carl Bernstein about how Bush’s presidency is far more damaging to our country than Nixon’s presidency.

Unlike the often crude and conniving but unquestionably intelligent and highly-engaged 37th president, Bernstein says of Bush: “He’s lazy, arrogant and has little curiosity. He’s a catastrophe…”

But that is not the worst part of the Bush era as compared to the Nixon era, explains Bernstein.

What has made this time dramatically more troubling, the 63-year-old journalist explains, is that “there is no oversight.”

“The system worked in Watergate,” Bernstein told the Denver Post.

Even after Nixon was reelected in a 49-state landslide in 1972, Bernstein said, the president was checked and balanced in the manner intended by the founders of the American experiment.

The news media investigated Nixon, and editorialized boldly when the president’s lawless behaviors were exposed.

The Congress responded to those revelations with hearings and demands for White House tapes and documents. When the materials were not forthcoming, Congress went to court to force Nixon and his aides to meet those demands.

The courts responded by aggressively and consistently upholding the authority of Congress to call the president to account.

And when it became clear that Nixon was governing in contradiction to the Constitution, the U.S. House took appropriate action, with Democrats and Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voting for three articles of impeachment. Congressional Republicans, led by Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, then went to the White House to inform their party’s president that he stood little chance of thwarting an impeachment vote by the full House or surviving a trial in the Senate.

Nixon resigned and so ended a constitutional crisis created by a president’s disregard for the rule of law — a crisis that was cured by an impeachment move by House members who respected their oaths of office.

Today, says Bernstein, the system that worked in the 1970s is failing as the country witnesses presidential and vice presidential misdeeds that former White House counsel John Dean has correctly characterized as “worse than Watergate.”

Referring to the media, congressional and judicial oversight that is essential to maintaining a republic, Bernstein says, “That hasn’t happened here.”

Tomorrow our glorious leader will take it up the ass instead of us.

President Bush will undergo a “routine” colonoscopy Saturday…

Snow told reporters Friday that Bush will have the procedure done at his Camp David, Md., mountaintop retreat.

The last time Bush had colon and rectal cancer surveillance was on June 29, 2002. Doctors then advised him to have another colonoscopy in five years.

…

Snow said that because president will be under the effects of anesthesia, he once again has elected to implement Section 3 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. Cheney will serve as acting president until Bush notifies authorities that he is ready to reassume his powers.

It’s not unusual for a man Bush’s age to undergo routine colonoscopy exams.  What’s unusual is that they are actually following the rules outlined in the Constitution.

So if you feel a sudden icy chill shoot up your spine early tomorrow morning, don’t be alarmed.  It’s just the Dark Lord assuming power for what we hope is a very brief period of time.

What harm could he possibly do in a couple of hours?  Oh… maybe start a war against Iran.  No big deal.