Thank the Lord for small favors

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President Bush approved an order Wednesday that rewrites the rules governing spying by U.S. intelligence agencies, both in the United States and abroad, and strengthens the authority of the national intelligence director, according to a U.S. official and government documents.

Executive Order 12333, which lays out the responsibilities of each of the 16 agencies, maintains the decades-old prohibitions on assassination and using unwitting human subjects for scientific experiments, according to a power point briefing given to Congress that was reviewed by The Associated Press. The CIA notoriously tested LSD on human subjects in the 1950s, which was revealed by a Senate investigation in 1977.

Now, I think that if I dug around, I could find examples where our official policy was that we were engaging in assassination and experimentation, although maybe we just torture people without collecting data on it, which would make it not prohibited by this rule.

Anyway, that's for another time, and another blogger. I just want to celebrate the fact that they're still against the law.