My guest on Salon Radio today is journalist Murray Waas. He has two separate new articles in The Atlantic released today which contain potentially enormous revelations about the illegal Bush NSA spying program -- this one, which details new evidence strongly suggesting that it was President Bush who, in March of 2004, ordered Alberto Gonzales to go to the hospital room of an extremely sick John Ashcroft in order to extract the authorization for Bush's surveillance program that the rest of the DOJ refused to provide -- and this one, which provides new evidence that Gonzales fabricated fraudulent notes of a meeting with key members of Congress to give cover to Bush's decision to order the illegal surveillance program to continue, and that Bush himself may have played a role in the creation of those notes.

The discussion is roughly 30 minutes and can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below. A transcript will be posted shortly.

On a separate note, here is another clip -- perhaps the most cringe-inducing one yet (though the competition for that title is fierce) -- from Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric, in which Palin "explains" her view of what America's policy towards Israel should be:



Presumably, that means that Palin opposes what the Bush administration reportedly did here -- namely, object to Israel's plans to attack Iran earlier this year. If Palin had her way, the U.S. would have given the green light, since to second guess Israel is -- as she put it -- to send a message that we're going to allow a Second Holocaust.

Palin's position -- to the extent it can be discerned here -- isn't really different from the McCain/Lieberman/Kristol view that will prevail if McCain wins (and they're hardly alone). As Atrios correctly notes, what makes her answers so conspicuous isn't the "substance" or even the nonsensical nature of her views -- all of that is common. What makes her stand out on a visceral level is the fact that she hasn't mastered Beltway nonsense-speak. Still, her cartoon understanding of these matters, expressed in the language and with the analytical ability of a (poorly prepared) junior high student, is quite noteworthy (and kudos to Couric for conducting a relatively excellent interview in general and for pressing Palin on her Israel views specifically).

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Interview with Murray Waas: