When he’s impeached

I wonder if this is what it’ll look like.

(Pic is a Photoshopped Time magazine cover of Ollie North: Another Republican who lied like some people breathe, used the Constitution like a lobster bib and only got interested in law and order – and dug his purdy uniform out of the closet -- when he got caught.)

This from the WaPo…

Bush Defends Domestic Spying
President, Deputy National Intelligence Chief Say Program Allows Better Terrorist Tracking

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 23, 2006; 5:48 PM

President Bush and the nation's deputy national intelligence chief today defended the legality of a controversial domestic spying program, describing it as a vital tool in the war against terrorists and denying that it violates the civil liberties of Americans.

Calling the effort a "terrorist surveillance program," Bush said in a speech at Kansas State University that he authorized the eavesdropping program after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in an effort to detect any continuing plots involving members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network overseas and persons operating inside the United States.

…
He said, "I'm mindful of your civil liberties, and so I had all kinds of lawyers review the process. We briefed members of the United States Congress . . . about this program.

"You know, it's amazing that people say to me, 'Well, he was just breaking the law.' If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?" Bush said with a chuckle.
Bush said he has "authority under the Constitution to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance against our enemies," and that a 2001 congressional authorization for the use of force gave him "additional authority" in waging war against al Qaeda.

"Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people, but it didn't prescribe the tactics," he said. "It said, Mr. President, you've got the power to protect us, but we're not going to tell you how."

…
White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters before Bush's speech that "some Democratic leaders . . . have continued to engage in misleading, false attacks about this vital tool."

He said lawmakers "were fully aware of this program" but that "now some Democrats want to try to have it both ways."

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement that "Americans of all backgrounds and political parties are concerned about the NSA's domestic spying program." He called on the administration to "level with the American people and participate fully and openly in upcoming Congressional hearings."

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said, "Today the president spoke for nearly two hours, but failed to explain why he considers himself above the law." Bush "has yet explain why the secret FISA courts are not good enough or fast enough, or tell Congress what changes need to be made in the law," he said in a statement. "It's time for a real investigation to get to the truth."

Philip D. O'Neill, Jr., an attorney who teaches national security law at the Boston University School of Law and supported Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, rejected Bush's assertion today that the 2001 congressional resolution gave him the authority to conduct the secret surveillance program.

"The strained legal excuse of congressional authorization through broad resolution is simply divorced from political reality," O'Neill said.

…
Hayden added: "This is not about intercepting conversations between people in the United States. This is hot pursuit of communications entering or leaving America involving someone we believe is associated with al Qaeda."
He warned that "if we fail to do our job well and completely, more Americans will almost certainly die."

…
Pressed on why the administration did not seek to amend FISA if the law were inadequate, Hayden said he would express "no view on the political step of going to Congress" for such an amendment. But he alluded to concerns that doing so could "betray to the enemy the tactics, techniques and procedures that we are now using to detect them."
…

And if I may add... Booga!Booga!Booga!

Note Hayden’s openly fascistic contempt for the “political step” of going to Congress to make sure what he is doing is legal.

His utterly ridiculous predicating assumption that if Congressional Leaders were quietly consulted about, let’s say, doubling or tripling the slack time built into the FISA Law under which you have wiretapping latitude without getting a permission slip from Congress – from three days to, say, seven – that even that conversation would have, “betray[ed] to the enemy the tactics, techniques and procedures that we are now using to detect them."

Oh bullshit.

This aren’t the words of men who have taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States; these are bitching, fear-mongering excuses of men who despise the Constitution. Who view it as an inconvenience. An impeding speed-bump that’s keeping us from drag racing this democracy right off the cliff into Jesusland.

The question is simple: if you know who they are, why aren’t you burying them in agents? Why don’t you have a fistful of warrants to tap everything they touch? The Congress has given you every fucking thing you asked for, served up on the good china with a side of garlic mashed potatoes. Congress would have give Bush Administration light sabers if they’d asked. And a metric ton of blow. And a thousand runway models off of whose asses they could have done said blow.

And a completely prostrate press who would have happily looked the other way and slammed anyone who asked sticky questions about coke haloes around the noses of senior staffers.

So having been given the biggest blank check in modern history, how come the Bushies are now acting like the Constitution is a pair of hurtin’ shoes two sizes too small that their mommy made them wear to the funeral of a distant and unloved Uncle?

Because. They. Are. Liars.

Or, as John Murtha said on “60 Minutes”:

“He’s trying to fight this war with rhetoric," Murtha responds. "Iraq is not where the center of terrorism is. So when he says we’re fighting terrorism over there, we’re inciting terrorism over there.--- He said before there’s weapons of mass destruction. He said there’s an al Qaeda connection. There’s many things he said turned out not to be true. So why would I believe him...

Which is the whole point: Dubya’s has long since pissed away that “Just trust me” trust fund he inherited on 9/11. Now he actually has to prove up, and every time he’s been forced to stand up and earn our trust instead of trying to scare us into it, he has shit his pants and run like the coward that he is.

Bush took his bid for imperial power to his own, pet Attorney General -- John Fucking Ashcroft -- and Ashcroft told him to go piss up a rope.

He took it to his pet Republican Congress – who gave him 99.9% of what he asked for -- and asked for them to install him as an American Napoleon, and the Republican Congress declined.


Per the NYT,

“He also cited a recent Supreme Court decision, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, to bolster his argument that bypassing the courts fell within presidential power during a time when the country is fighting terrorism.”

But…

The Supreme Court agreed that Mr. Hamdi's capture was authorized by the Congressional resolution, but rejected the administration's more sweeping claims…”

This isn’t hard to understand, unless of course you have a vested interest in remaining willfully ignorant.

Bush asked everybody and his brother to let him be King.

Everybody and his brother told him, to fuck off.

He went ahead and did it anyway.

He got caught.

And now he’s making like everyone and his brother just never understood the question and somehow secretly gave him permission to do what he wanted even though they clearly and unambiguously told him, “No!”

This is Constitutional Date Rape.

And now that he’s been caught sans culottes, Dubya wants you to believe that she really wanted it even though she cried and punched and begged him to stop.