Giant apes

I had gotten a vague idea that Gigantopithecus inspired the story of King Kong, but it was actually discovered two years after the movie.

It was more Mighty Joe Young-sized than King Kong-sized, but it's still an odd coincidence.

Spying

Hilzoy thinks we have our impeachable offense. The Bush administration has done lots of things that, in a just world, probably would have come under that banner (particularly as the breadth and variety of approved prisoner-torture comes to light), but (as somebody said about the Plame affair) they got Capone for tax evasion. If the story is true, the NSA spying order is a more clear-cut violation than most, and of a fairly basic nature.

As Hilzoy points out, there are clear-cut procedures to follow that would have made this kind of warrantless spying unnecessary even in a fast-breaking emergency. The NYT article mentions the objection that following the law by requesting warrants from the court specifically put in place for such things could jeopardize the surveillance of huge batches of numbers at once; but I don't see any indication that the order was even limited to such operations.

The most interesting comment in that thread (I can't vouch for its authenticity, of course) is from "Ambassador David Fischer":

As a retired Ambassador who had oversight of the NSAs most sensitive operations at Bad Aibling, Germany from 1987-1991 it was difficult to convince others what I knew to be true: the NSA scrupulosly followed both the law and Constitution in protecting the rights of Americans under the 4th Amendment. Since 1997 I have taught courses in intelligence in which I taught my students that having learned from the mistakes of the 1950s and 1960s, NSA was "squeeky clean," going in some cases to absurd lengths to ensure they were not even close to the edge when it came to warantless surveillance of Americans --- both in the United States and abroad.

I've just sent an email to as many of my former students I can locate to tell them I was wrong. I can only express my disappointment that senior leaders at NSA did not resign in protest.[...]

Some commenters and others attempt a "time of war" defense, ignoring the fact that the time-of-war exception written into the law is both itself strictly limited and confined to declared wars.

Even given a more antagonistic Congress, actual impeachment proceedings over this would probably be difficult, given that this isn't an element of the unpopular Iraq war but rather a measure put in place under the post-September 11th sense that the government's security apparatus needed to take the gloves off to protect the country. But the administration's alleged desire to keep the program secret to avoid public and Congressional opposition is telling. The prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure was put into the Constitution by people who were perfectly aware that the young United States could face existential threats; they'd seen their share of them, on the whole far graver than anything we've faced in the last few years.

All in all, this probably counts as further evidence that the unwillingness of the US government since the mid-20th century to issue formal Congressional declarations of war for even the largest conflicts is a very bad trend. If "time of war" simply happens whenever the executive branch wants it to, and the executive branch gets extraordinary powers as a result, how could war not eventually become a perpetual state of being?