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*Rips out hair*
Okay, so President Bush used his year-end news conference yesterday to resume his public relations offensive against his critics, saying he wants the Justice Department to find out who committed the "shameful act" of leaking word that he secretly approved a special program to spy on US citizens, and blasting senators who have blocked the renewal of the Patriot Act.
He accuses others of shameful acts.
He has violated the separation of powers, he is in violation of the Constitution. He is spying on Americans. And yet his poll numbers are rebounding. I saw that and I thought I might spontaneously combust out of sheer political outrage. My god, what is it going to take for this country to wake up and realize it has been taken over by a dictator who is trashing our system of government?
Edited to add: This reminds me of an old Doonesbury cartoon. Two Congressmen are sitting listening to Nixon's lawyers during the Watergate hearings.
"'No impeachable offense. No impeachable offense,'" mimics one. "How can St. John keep spouting that gibberish?"
They lapse into a despondent silence.
"If only" muses the other, "he'd knock over a bank or something."
"By George!" exclaims the first, "We'd have him then!"
He accuses others of shameful acts.
He has violated the separation of powers, he is in violation of the Constitution. He is spying on Americans. And yet his poll numbers are rebounding. I saw that and I thought I might spontaneously combust out of sheer political outrage. My god, what is it going to take for this country to wake up and realize it has been taken over by a dictator who is trashing our system of government?
Edited to add: This reminds me of an old Doonesbury cartoon. Two Congressmen are sitting listening to Nixon's lawyers during the Watergate hearings.
"'No impeachable offense. No impeachable offense,'" mimics one. "How can St. John keep spouting that gibberish?"
They lapse into a despondent silence.
"If only" muses the other, "he'd knock over a bank or something."
"By George!" exclaims the first, "We'd have him then!"
no subject
In this particular case, he is using the NSA to spy on communications that cross U.S. borders and (he says) only from people that have been found to have some type of contact with Al Qaida. Sounds almost reasonable except that the tired line of "just trust me" is wearing a bit thin. While the NSA's mission is somewhat changed with this directive, they also are obliged to turn over illegal activity information to the proper authorities.
Even that doesn't persuade some (as it's not just terrorists, but criminals as well). However, we have seen from multiple examples of what this administration can and will do and it goes well beyond simple spying on 'criminals'.
Do you think Dick Cheney really cares about your Civil Liberties? Do you think Rummy cares if we fundamentally change the ideals of America because of the possibility of a terrorist attack? Maybe they shouldn't, but we damn well better.
If the Bushites truly cared about such things they first would do more to strengthen our security (borders, airport, trains, food, medicine, nuclear power plants, etc..) than they have rather than spying on Quakers or discerning what book I checked out at my local library. I forgot...they don't have the money to do that as they've been too busy balancing the budget on students and the poor and making sure that that 1% keeps its tax cut...my bad.