Powerline: Dead Tree edition

A little while back, based on their sudden expertise on a 1970s Northern Ireland human rights case, we labelled David Rivkin and Lee Casey the print equivalent of Powerline -- strident, flailing, pseudo-authoritative defences of George W. Bush. They expanded the scale of their operations with an op-ed piece in the New York Times a couple of days ago, defending George Bush's domestic spying program on the grounds that the President gets to do any activity that is merely prohibited by laws written some time ago.

Here's a nice brief analysis of their central point from TAPped, but one clause from one sentence illustrates where small government conservatism has gone:

the contretemps its revelation [NSA spying] has caused reveals much more about the chattering classes' fundamental antipathy to strong government in general

It's time to start referring to the seemingly endless supply of lawyers willing to argue for this rubbish as smoked salmon statists.