Throwing Congressional Tantrums Won't Keep the Bush Administration from Its Domestic Spying for Political Purposes
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
It hasn’t taken much courage to go out on a limb, as we did in our BuzzFlash editorial yesterday, to claim that the Bush Administration is almost certainly amassing its illegal and legal domestic spying powers for primarily partisan purposes.
No, it’s not courage. It’s just common sense.
We recently laid out the Bush Administration/Rovian three-pronged game book for firmly controlling election outcomes and unilaterally determining the law in the United States -- and don’t think Rove’s long-term strategy for one-party rule is going away, even if he has officially resigned from the White House (remember that this is the crew that openly and brazenly stole the 2000 election, and Rove hasn’t resigned from being a strategist for the Republican Party.)
The reason that the Bush/Cheney administration is so fiercely fighting the surrender of information about their illegal spying on American citizens is because what they have done is far, far worse than Watergate. They have violated the most basic of Constitutional guarantees to achieve political advantage.
Anyone who can’t see that this is what they are doing in their multiple front effort to expand domestic surveillance powers is either naïve or politically compromised.
When the fairly tame New York Times editorial board calls for the impeachment of Alberto Gonzales, as it did on August 19th, you know that something is up, and that the White House has long ago crossed the threshold of legal behavior into the land where they have racked up potential felony charges far too numerous to count.As much as we respect Nancy Pelosi and Pat Leahy for what they would do if we had a Democratic president (i.e., respect the Constitution and the rule of law), we find it hard to any longer tolerate their idle threats against the lawbreakers in the executive branch, in the absence of hard-nosed action.
Just yesterday, on August 20, Pat Leahy once again threatened to get tough with the White House over its failure to turn over their records that will indicate illegal non-FISA Court domestic spying (that’s our interpretation of their contents). After the Bush Administration refused to comply with a Congressional subpoena, Leahy declared, "The time is up," Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said after the 2:30 p.m. deadline passed. "The time is up. We’ve waited long enough."But in typical Democratic leadership fashion, Leahy added, "I prefer cooperation to contempt."
Ah, yes, we suppose Eliot Ness should have held out the olive branch to Al Capone! The next thing we know is that Pat Leahy is going to get so mad that he will kick an empty can of Van Camp Beans down the Capitol Hill Steps. That will make Bush and Cheney quiver, just wait!
What we have here folks, made even worse by the enhanced executive branch legal domestic surveillance powers just passed by a Democratic Congress, is spying on Americans to achieve political goals: i.e., the continued rule of the Republican Party in the executive branch, as they continue to pack the federal courts with partisan hacks who will uphold their "unitary" dictatorial powers as they incrementally increase them.
What the Bush Administration is doing is not only illegal, unconstitutional, and a subversion of democracy, it is accomplishing the goals of the terrorists -- as outlined by Bush himself -- for them.
Bush keeps telling us that the terrorists (whoever they might be on a given day) "hate us for our freedoms" and want to see democracy destroyed. So, Bush is enabling the terrorists: he is taking our freedoms away without their having to lift a finger at this point.
The terrorists don’t need to launch another 9/11 to see the completion of the dismantling of democracy and the rule of law.
Bush and Cheney are doing that for them.
They are achieving the objectives of the terrorists in the ultimate act of surrendering America.
Right now, at this very moment, the Bush Administration is using legal and illegal domestic spying powers (and now they are declaring that they will be using satellites to spy on us – which means that they already are) for political and self-serving goals.
Franklin Roosevelt displayed remarkable and inspiring leadership when he rallied Americans by saying that the only thing that we had to fear was fear itself.
In 2007, it is our own executive branch whom we have to fear the most, because they are lawbreakers who are working to emulate the Stasi.
Pat Leahy, getting mad won’t accomplish a thing except throwing a tantrum. You are a former prosecutor.
Start prosecuting, stop threatening.
We don’t need whining. We need a conviction.
Democracy, our freedom, and our Constitution depend upon it.
Lawbreakers of the most traitorous sort sit in the White House.
Leahy should know the risks.
His office – along with Tom Daschle’s – was a target of the still unsolved anthrax attacks, just at the time the Democrats temporarily controlled the senate and the "Patriot Act" was under consideration.
The weaponized anthrax used in those attacks (that also resulted in the deaths of postal workers) came from a U.S. bioweapons research lab, which functioned under military supervision. No one was prosecuted for the anthrax terrorist attacks (despite another Bush promise to find the perpetrator), but we do know that whomever did it was almost certainly in some way connected with the U.S. government. Odd coincidence, yes?
Pat Leahy, crimes have been committed – and they are continuing.
You don’t negotiate with the mob if you want to put them out of business – and keep them from spying on you, or sending you anthrax in the mail.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
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