Tin-Pot Dictatorships

Indeed.

The idea of granting blanket retroactive amnesty for private companies and high government officials who repeatedly broke the law in how they spied on Americans is the stuff of tin-pot third-world dictatorships. It is so corrupt and reprehensible that it ought to be beyond the ken of what could even be considered. But with an indescribably (and increasingly) accommodating Democratic Congress, along with Democratic power brokers like Gorelick working in tandem with telecoms and their Republican lobbyists to bring about such legislation, its passage -- as both the NYT and Newsweek are reporting -- is close to guaranteed. The MoveOn ad was terrible.