Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Bush Fought the Law, and the Law Won

White House Says Judiciary Will Monitor Spy Program:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 -- The Bush administration, in what appears to be a concession to its critics, said today it will allow an independent court to monitor its warrantless electronic-eavesdropping program.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to supervise anti-terrorism wiretapping within the United States, will supervise the eavesdropping operations from now on.

Now wait a minute...six months ago these people were insisting that if the NSA had to go through all the time and trouble of getting a warrant to eavesdrop, even a retroactive one 72 hours after the wiretap actually began, then Scary Dark People were going to come and behead us all in our sleep. In fact, the argument went, anyone who dared suggest that the Dear Leader actually had to obey the law was actually on the side of the Scary Dark People and should probably be in Gitmo themselves. Now Bush says, "hey, I've decided to get a warrant after all." This can only mean that Bush wants us to be beheaded by Scary Dark People.
Can't wait to see how the wingnuts spin this one.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hummmmm, I wonder which senators forced Bush&co to deal that one for support of his Iraq plans. Sununu, Craig or maybe that is the cost of being hugged by McCain.

Things are getting interesting.
Dale

Mark Terry said...

What's so wildly frustrating and more than a little frightening is the FISA court is pretty much a rubber stamp anyway. So George Bush and all his Flying Monkeys wanting to go around it made no sense from a logistics point of view.

What it suggests, actually, is that Bush et al just don't want oversight of any kind. Period.

JD Rhoades said...

Mark: you called it. The most dangerous thing about this Administration is not its sheer bloody incompetence, bad though that may be. It's their clearly stated vision of presidential power, which they assert is literally unlimited. They've clearly stated that they believe that, at least in wartime, the President is above the law. This is not an exaggeration...witness the famous "signing statements" wherein Bush clearly states that he, as President is not bound by laws he doesn't like. This theory's most vocal proponent is Dick Cheney who's been pushing it since his days in the Nixon Administration.

I keep asking people who blather about how "The Preznit is just trying to protect us"...would you hand that much power to President Hillary Clinton?