Totalitarian Information Awareness

Xeni Jardin has a nice and handy round-up of links to and excerpts from pieces providing good background and commentary on the Obama Administration's ongoing efforts to gain direct access to all forms of digital communication. Quite apart from debates we have about electing Republicans versus Democrats, it is important to remember that the positional politics between and within branches and layers of government have their own anti-democratizing vicissitudes, inertias, and momenta. Especially given the force of military agency in the face of legislative deadlock, as well as the force of the bully pulpit in celebrity culture, the catastrophic ongoing shoring up of the imperial presidency -- whether it happens to be a Republican or a Democrat enjoying the imperial perquisites -- is something that we must resist as citizens and especially through the legislative and judiciary branches at whose institutional expense the executive is amplified.