This may well be one of the most chilling stories that I have read in a long time. Your leaders– they of the mighty speeches lauding our history of freedom and liberty and democracy– are enthusiastically spying on you, without warrants, without judges, without congress.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is doing what every citizen of the United States should be doing. It is asserting the right of any individual to not have his private conversations intercepted by his government without just cause.
The Bush administration, as is well known, has asserted that it has the right to spy on anyone whenever they damn well feel like it without the slightest degree of oversight. All they have to do is say aloud to themselves, three times, “we are at war, we are at war, we are war”. Astonishingly, we are then at war. If we are at war, then national security trumps all.
According to the New York Times, Mr. Gonzales responded: “Obviously, our prosecutors are going to look to see all the laws that have been violated. And if the evidence is there, they’re going to prosecute those violations.”
That’s hilarious– Mr. Gonzales doesn’t mean he’s going to check into the “laws that have been violated” of course– because the Bush administration has clearly violated laws in the holding of prisoners and domestic spying and the use of rendition.
There is not even a the need, apparently, to persuade congress that something like a “war” exists and that the U.S. is in it.
The Bush administration even now is considering whether to prosecute the press for publishing secrets about the government’s illegal domestic spying activities. Yes, up is down and down is up. The Supreme Court, stacked with Republican appointees, has never been more receptive.
The True Post Modernist: George Bush
As many people have remarked, Bush’s actions here are at odds with true conservatism, which views government with suspicion, and seeks restrictions on it’s ability to interfere with peoples’ lives.