How strange is this, that we even have to have these discussions? Why are “liberal” pundits so determined to be thought of as “serious” that they fervently embrace the same conventional wisdom (and thus, the same cognitive dissonance) as the gang we just showed the door? Glenn Greenwald on (you guessed it) Ryan Lizza from “Even the Liberal” New Republic:

So knowing and sophisticated. So wise and insightful to the hard-core political realities. Always above the lowly impassioned masses and their misguided, simplistic notions (such as the belief that there should be consequences for presidential lawbreaking — how excitable and stupid that is). TNR is always so cleverly restrained and calculating.

And the stupid liberal blogosphere — cheering on Feingold’s stand against the President. As though that’s about anything other than Feingold’s ‘08 presidential run. How “obvious” that is.

And all of that is to say nothing about the complete incoherence of Lizza’s “argument.” How could “changing FISA” — what Lizza calls “the way to address Bush’s overreach” — possibly be a solution to the president’s lawbreaking when the whole point is that the President claims he has no obligation to comply with FISA because Congress can’t limit his eavesdropping activities?

Censure was the only way (short of impeachment) for Congress to force the President to comply with the law and to express its objections to the President’s lawbreaking. “Changing FISA” was — and still is — a complete non-sequitur to the President’s conduct, which is based on the premise that FISA (like all laws that limit the President’s conduct concerning national security) is a nullity. But to Lizza, that’s the more moderate, passionless and less disruptive course. Therefore, by definition, it’s the best one — the only one that responsible and sophisticated political experts like him would ever consider.

God, I hate these people.