I have a few questions, eventually.
First, I used to live in New York City. I have empathy and sympathy for those poor folks. But frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. A bunch of lawyers having to hike to work? What a shame. Five Insurance company drones to a cab? Ahh, too bad. Six bankers on skate boards collided in Columbus Circle? Ach, the humanity. Okay, the banker collision would be headlines anywhere, but it didn’t happen. And still the rest of the nation must suffer through endless video of pedestrians….walking. And traffic jams on East River Drive, like that never happens every day of the week. I once had hopes when CNN established their base in Atlanta that our news media might finally become less NYC-centralistic but it never happened. Why not NBC in Chicago, ABC in Denver, and leave CBS in New York? They need the edge. Why not, I ask, as if anybody was going to answer that question. I’m such an idiot I think the Supreme Court should be based in Kansas City, and the FBI in San Francisco.
It’s a shame the story bored me so fast because the New York Times has two interesting stories on the front page today. (News so well balanced you could juggle it.) One says the transit talks broke down over a $20 million item on the pension plan – which is like saying the tire went flat because of one particular nail amongst all the hundreds of nails the car ran over. And the second story explains that the Transit workers’ union in NYC is not being supported by their national. If that is true I have only one word to say to the transit workers national union; SEIU – the Service Employees International Union, which I pronounce “Sewy”. These are the California hot heads who started out organizing janitors in L.A., moved to government workers, nurses and hospital workers, and are now in Texas doing the same. These guys take no prisoners, and they win. I happen to believe that most of labor’s problems are the result of “shifting economics”, the global economy, etc. But these guys seem to prove that a substantial portion of those problems are that labor leadership has no balls. All nationals had better start backing their locals because sewie is going to eat them alive.
The point of all this is that I am driven to ask, where is the news about George’s excellent adventures in surveillance land? Under the fold? Page three? After the first commercial break? Are the citizens of Denver really more affected by the NYC transit strike than they are by George Bush’s nose being shoved up their telephones? I think not.
A judge from the FISA court (a Clinton appointee) has resigned in protest and the other judges seem to be a little worked up, too. Congress is displaying some backbone and patriotism for a change, which is a little surprising. Barbra Boxer, California’s little Hispanic super liberal, has even mentioned the word impeachment, which in reference to this administration is starting to have all the impact of the word “fuck” in a Martin Scorsese film. Barbra (who by the way I think is HOT), says she never thought of the word until John Dean, of Watergate and Countdown fame, said that this was the first time he ever heard a President admit to an impeachable offense. And yes, I was shocked. G. Bush never admits to anything. And this is what he chooses to start being honest about? I think he may have skipped a step in the program. But Barbra says she never realized that warrant-less wiretaps could be an impeachable offense until Dean mentioned it. If that is true Barbra is as big an idiot as Bush.
Well, at least Senator Bill Frist has remained true to form – he’s still the biggest putz in Congress. This guy couldn’t organize a dog pack. He’s supposedly angry some Republicans stalled his big push for the Patriot Act extension, which is like a lawyer being ticked off because his motion for a parole hearing was delayed because his client is currently being booked for murdering another prisoner.
The law – as every Democrat now knows and as every Republican chooses to avoid knowing, allows a rubber stamp court to approve a wiretap 72 hours AFTER the wire has been tapped, which destroys the Bush/Cheney justification that time constraints prevented them from obeying the constitution. At no time has Bush/Cheney ever asked Congress to change that law. And at no time has Bush/Cheney ever complained, in public or private – that the FISA court was too slow, too restrictive, too liberal, too anything. The Supreme Court they complain about. Federal judges from Maine to Washington State are a bunch of Godless, child hating, abortion loving scum. (The holy book of Tom Delay, Stupid Acts, chapter three, verse ten.). But the FISA courts have remained complaint-less.
So my first question is; has this administration continued to seek warrants for wiretaps from the FISA courts? Question two: has this administration continued to seek post tap warrants from the FISA courts? If the answer to both of these questions is yes, and only our representatives in Congress can tell us if it is- (assuming they have more personal integrity than Senator Rockefeller -“Sorry you’re all slaves – I would have warned you about the coup but it was a secret”.), then what kind of wiretaps would Bush want to hide from such minimal even retroactive oversight?
The only answer that springs to my mind is that they were taps they damn well knew they couldn’t get a court to approve, even a rubber stamp court, even after collecting evidence for 72 hours. They wanted wiretaps which might make the courts start questioning more closely the wiretaps they did bother to ask for. What kind of wire taps could those have been? I mean, after 9/11 you could have gotten a wiretap for a living room couch if you called it Abdullah. Say, you don’t think these arrogant idiots could have used the N.S.A. the way Tom Delay used the FAA to track down Democrats, do you?
Why, yes. Yes, I do.
Oh, and one more question; Who at the N.S.A. carried out what were clearly illegal orders from the White House, day in and day out, for the last five years? Who at that agency gave away our freedom so easily, so agreeably, between their coffee break and lunch? It would appear we are going to have to clean house at the N.S.A., don’t it?
But has anybody noticed this? Is it on the front page? Lord knows it’s not news that this generation of Republicans have all rushed to defend the constitution with all the passion of a piece of broccoli at a vegetarian restaurant. And you won’t hear any mainline news media suggest Emperor Bush may be as craven a politician as those disorganized Democrats they so enjoy dismissing as disorganized. But at least they’ve got the New York Transit strike to fill their 24 hour news channels until some real news comes along.
See, I think the real news is that political surveillance is the only explanation that makes sense for Bush’s actions. But then what do I know about news? I thought a White House outing of an undercover CIA agent would have been news, but Bob Woodward obviously knew better. Still, if the extra-constitutional wiretaps had been in any way a real national security matter, then why would Bush not have obeyed such an easy law to obey? It’s not like anybody was asking him to walk the warrant applications over to the court himself. Now that would have been news even Judith Miller would have recognized.
And if I see one more shot of people hiking down Sixth Avenue, I’m going to piss into the back of my TV until Wolf Blitzer’s eyes turn yellow. I’m warning you, Wolf. Stop it.
