Savor the silence of America's self-serving champions of privacy. For once, the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing bad to say about the latest case of secret domestic surveillance -- because it is the ACLU that committed the spying.

Last week, The Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo Bay detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers -- "in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes" -- were shown to jihadi suspects tied to the 9/11 attacks in order to identify the interrogators.

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Pay czar Kenneth Feinberg's official government title is "Special Master for Compensation." You'll be happy to know that he's really getting into the confiscatory spirit of his role. Asked by Reuters whether his powers include reaching back and revoking bonuses awarded to financial industry executives before his office was created earlier this year, Feinberg asserted broad and binding authorities -- including the ability to "claw back" money already paid out.

Regulations governing his office explicitly limit his jurisdiction over contracts signed before Feb. 11, 2009. But the fine print is no obstacle to Obama's czars. "The statute provides these guideposts, but the statute ultimately says I have discretion to decide what it is that these people should make and that my determination will be final," Feinberg claims. "Anything is possible under the law."

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Who are the real thugs? Democrats attack congressional town hall protesters as "Brown Shirts" -- likening taxpayer activists across the country to Hitler's storm troopers. But it's the Big Labor hoodlums clad in identical purple shirts -- the uniform of Service Employees International Union members -- who own the mob label.

Margarida Jorge, a former SEIU organizing director who now serves as national field director for the deep-pocketed, left-wing coalition Health Care for America Now, sent out a memo to her foot soldiers last week on how to counter Obamacare opponents. "You must bring enough people to drown them out and to cover all our bases so as to marginalize their disruptive tactics," she exhorted.

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If you think government is too big and too costly, wait until Obamacare kicks in. The Congressional Budget Office put the price tag of the House Democrats' health care takeover plans at $1.5 trillion over 10 years. But the CBO's fine print included a telltale caveat:

"We have not yet estimated the administrative costs to the federal government of implementing the specified policies, nor have we accounted for all of the proposal's likely effects on spending for other federal programs."

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The White House sure likes to put on a show. Fresh off its joint stage production with ABC News, the Obama administration broadcast another health-care propaganda play this week under the guise of a citizen "town hall."

Chicago consigliere and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett managed the floor and human props for Obama. In a telling moment as the event kicked off, she protested a wee bit much: "I want to emphasize that the president has not seen the questions ahead of time." The audience responded with polite laughter.

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