Nothing provides a mirror image of government power better than lobbyists, who are hired principally for the likelihood that they will persuade powerful people to do things. That's what makes it such a sign of the times that the ACLU has hired Georgia's departing bomb-throwing Republican Congressman Bob Barr. Barr, you remember, called for Bill Clinton's impeachment even before anyone had heard of Monica Lewinsky; he was for years an icon of the Far Right, such as it is within the Beltway. But he's also an outspoken libertarian who has made privacy issues (real privacy issues, not privacy-as-a-code-word-for-abortion) his signature in Congress, which is apparently what he will focus on for the ACLU. The message here is that the ACLU understands that sending these types of people to Capitol Hill these days will get them nowhere.