The Right to Privacy . . . Remember That?

Clare says in today's email:

I don't want to give away the last line of "Why We Fight," but it did leap to mind today with the report that the "independent" Republicans have agreed to allow Bush 45 days of unfettered wiretapping. In that time, he can go to the special court to see [about] a warrant, if he feels like it. If he doesn't, he just needs to check in with a special 7-member panel of Congress every 45 days. As if those 7 members could do anything?!

Where's the fucking outrage!?

Why are we handing this nincompoop all these tools?

Very well said, although I think tools is an unfortunate euphemism for additional illegal weapons in the ongoing war against the American people's right to be left alone.

I also think saying nincompoop is vastly more polite than this president merits.

Every time something creepy surfaces about George Bush and his administration's undercover activities, it turns out that it really is just the tip of yet another iceberg.

According to a recent post on tnr.com, The New Republic's web site:

SWEAR TACTICS

Wow, is it a good thing Alberto Gonzales didn't give sworn testimony when he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month about President Bush's controversial warrantless surveillance program. Of the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program, the administration will say only that it targets communications between someone in the United States and someone overseas when one party is believed to be a member or affiliate of a terrorist organization. But it defends the program--which flouts the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's requirement of warrants for domestic surveillance--as an inherent presidential power. In his February 6 testimony to the Committee, Gonzales also attempted to mollify critics by pointing out that the allegedly limited program was "all that [Bush] has authorized." That made little sense to several senators and legal analysts, who wondered why Bush would restrict the program to international communications if he was claiming such broad authority.

It turns out that, indeed, he may not have. This week, Gonzales wrote the Committee a letter "clarify[ing]" his earlier testimony. "I did not and could not address ... any other classified intelligence activities," the attorney general wrote. "I was confining my remarks to the Terrorist Surveillance Program as described by the President." Wait--other classified intelligence activities? Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official in both Democratic and Republican administrations, told The Washington Post, "It seems to me he is conceding that there are other NSA surveillance programs ongoing that the president hasn't told anyone about." If so, that would make a mockery of forthcoming legislative attempts to authorize surveillance on terrorist communications, since Bush might simply go around the law. It wouldn't be the first time. In April 2004, Bush told a Buffalo, New York, audience that "any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires--a wiretap requires a court order," when in fact the Terrorist Surveillance Program was at that very moment circumventing court orders. Gonzales needs to go back before the Senate panel--this time, with his hand on a Bible.

-- tnr.com's Notebook, posted 8 Mar 2006

When I read stuff like this, I tell myself, "Hang in there. It's less than eight months till the mid-term elections."

Whereupon the other half of me immediately chimes in, "Assuming that they will, in fact, be held . . ."