I’ve finally decided that the most effective purveyor of terrorism in the US is in fact, the Bush Administration.
When you threaten a government entity with the sole purpose of causing enough fear to change existing government policy, that’s terrorism.
Bush did that this weekend with FISA. Even worse, now that he knows he has gotten away with it, he wants more authority.
“While I appreciate the leadership it took to pass this bill, we must remember that our work is not done,” the President said in his Sunday statement. “This bill is a temporary, narrowly focused statute to deal with the most immediate shortcomings in the law.”
The President said next month he would focus on further immunizing private companies that cooperate with government wiretapping. However, he used complicated language to describe these activities.
“When Congress returns in September the Intelligence committees and leaders in both parties will need to complete work on the comprehensive reforms requested by Director McConnell, including the important issue of providing meaningful liability protection to those who are alleged to have assisted our Nation following the attacks of September 11, 2001,” he said.
Greeeeeeat. And of course, the White House spin today is nothing short of incredible
Yesterday, President Bush signed into law an expansion of his domestic spying powers, legislation that the Washington Post called “as reckless as it was unnecessary.” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino appeared on Fox and Friends this morning to defend the new law, saying it was the “bare minimum of what Mike McConnell, the DNI, said he needed.”
She added, “And I see today that some people are saying that this is a wild expansion of powers for the president. That could not be further from the truth. Only in a Democratic spin room could they come up with expansion of powers when you have to — when what we actually did was return the law to its original intent.”
Yes, because the original intent of FISA was to be more of a general guideline for wiretapping anyone the President wants to with no oversight.
Just like the original intent of the Constitution was more of a set of suggestions for how we could have a monarchy with the trappings of a republic. It’s just a piece of goddamn paper, you see.
So when you fold your hand like this, then people start calling your bluff.
PERINO: Well, I think it’s because people finally understood that the director of national intelligence was extremely serious when he said, I have to have this.
Now, remember, this is a bare minimum of what Mike McConnell, the DNI, said he needed. And it was a real fight with the Democrats to get them to pull it across the line. We did have some help from some senators, like Senator Mikulski and Senator Feinstein to help pull this across the line, but it was down to the wire. And the work isn’t done yet. One of the things the president said yesterday is, When you come back in September, we’ve got more work to do. This law needs to be further modernized and we need to provide liability protection for companies who are alleged to have helped the United States after the 9/11 attacks.
Turns out the Dems didn’t give the President everything he wanted, only what he though he could reasonably get away with. NOW the President is expecting the Dems to give him everything he wanted as soon as they come back from vacation, which is to get the telcos off the hook for illegally wiretapping Americans. Of course this is a tacit admission that, well, the telcos were fucking illegally wiretapping Americans, and that Bush was illegally directing the telcos to illegally wiretap Americans. But that doesn’t matter, because in order to safeguard America from Raghead Sunzabitches(tm) we have to…immunize AT&T from lawsuits. Yeah, that’ll show Osama.
And as an extra added bonus, we get to listen to a month of the Noise Machine proclaiming how if AT&T isn’t retroactively immunized from breaking the law, that America will get overrun by terrorist ninjas riding velociraptors with suicide vests.
That’s it. At this point there is no opposition party, there is only the Subtle Gradations Of Encroaching Fascism Party. There is no Fourth Amendment. The Bush plan is clear:
- Terrah Attack! Blame the Democrats for not funding DARPA giant robots project that could have saved us all.
- Nuke Iran while blaming the Democrats for lack of giant robots to fight in Iran.
- Declare martial law, suspend elections and all other rights, blaming the Democrats for trying to stand up for civil liberties for giant robots, which led to 1).
- Re-institute the draft, blaming the Democrats for continuing lack of giant robots to fight for us in Iran.
- Demand Congress pass Giant Robot bill.
- Laugh like Wallace Shawn in the Princess Bride.
Jesus, how did we let this happen? We’re in the soft dictatorship, and now the only question is how long before the “soft” gets dropped.