Of all the scathing indictments of the Bush administration, this book may be the most so. Not hysterical at all, no knee-jerk liberal reactionary, constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald lays out in a jam-packed-with-information 128 pages (I used 68 page markers in all on this book, well more than my ususal 50 or so for a book twice that length) exactly how and why this administration is the most lawless ever to hold office. Not only are they lawless, he shows, but they are attempting to fundamentally alter our system of government through a pattern of deceit and unilateral decisionmaking. Completely bypassing or ignoring laws such as FISA, by eavesdropping (something no one has a problem with) without a warrant (something MANY people have a problem with), antitorture legislation, etc., the administration is putting forth a theory of the Constitution, laid out in black and white by administration attorney John Yoo, that the President has UNLIMITED authority in matters of national security. Thus, he can do, quite literally, ANYTHING he wants if he deems it necessary to national security, and cannot be checked by either of the other two branches of government. This includes tha ability to lock up American citizens, without a hearing of ANY KIND, nor access to legal representation, FOR LIFE. Therefore, under this theory, if the courts make a decision, or Congress passes a law, he can simply ignore it – it does not apply to him. There have been at least two instances of American citizens being jailed for years at a time without access to courts – and when challenged by others, they simply punt – in one case, charging the individual with an unrelated crime to what he was jailed for and insisting that the challenge to Bush’s authority was now moot, and in the other, simply forcing the person to renounce his citizenship and setting him free. There is really no way of knowing how many others are in this situation.

This is dangerous stuff, and Greenwald does an excellent job of laying out before the reader how exactly the administration is doing this, I can only encourage all persons of liberal, moderate, or non-authoritarian conservative bents to read this book. The one criticism I have would be that there are no footnotes, but all of these items have been reported by major media at one point or another, and are easily uncovered with a simple google search.

While Greenwald barely mentions impeachment in this book, the implication is clear – this President has openly admitted committing what amount to high crimes and misdemeanors.

I recommend this wholeheartedly, but especially because of two salient points Roberts makes:

First, oil depletion or peak oil is NOT the only issue affecting the use of oil as an energy source – environmental degradation and geopolitical instability MUST be spoken about in any discussion of the issue.

We’re coming to the end of the EASY oil – oil that will push itself right out of the earth. More and more, seawater must be pumped into the oil fields to push the oil out of the ground, and oil is being discovered in more and more difficult places to reach. This will only lead to increased costs.

As it becomes more and more difficult and costly to reach the oil, the more and more geopolitical power being handed over to other countries, and this leads into Roberts’s second point that I want to highlight, which he makes in the afterward to the paperback edition:

”...the greatest casualty of the Iraq war may be the very idea of energy security. Before the war, it was generally accepted by world leaders – and oil traders – that if global oil production truly did become threatened by political instability or terrorism, the United States could restore order, and exports, through some measure of diplomatic or military intervention…

But with the continuing fiasco in Iraq, it is now clear that even the most powerful military entity in world history cannot stabilize a country at will or “make” it produce oil simply by sending in soldiers and tanks. In other words, since the Iraq invasion, the oil market now understands that the United States cannot [Roberts emphasis] guarantee the security of oil supplies – for itself or for anyone else.”

And that, my friends, spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e.

Roberts is NOT overly alarmist, he makes it clear that we’re not going to run out of oil tomorrow, we have some time to fix this. But he sternly warns that this time is rapidly becoming shorter and shorter.

This is a terrific introduction to Chomsky’s political thought, it’s basically transcripts of question and answer sessions he gave throughout the late 80’s to mid 90’s, so it one of his more accessable reads because he’s just talking. The footnotes are extensive and don’t actually appear in the book. They can be accessed at http://www.understandingpower.com/ and can be purchased for an additional charge.

I ate this at lunch today, knowing it wasn’t entirely good for me. It was moderately tasty. Then I did a search online when I came on and this has FIFTY-NINE grams of fat. That’s a whole day’s allottment. Have a garden salad with chicken and a vinagrette dressing, it’s tastier than this.