Waiting for the Bush Prison Interviews

WASHINGTON
— A liberal Democrat and potential White House contender is proposing
to censure President Bush for authorizing domestic eavesdropping, saying
the White House misled Americans about its legality.

”The president has broken the law and, in some way, he must be held accountable," said
Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.

The five-page resolution to be introduced today contends
that Bush violated the law when, on his own, he set up the eavesdropping
program within the National Security Agency in the months after the attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001

from the Boston Globe

We have been predicting
this for quite some time, and
the NSA eavesdropping is only the tip of the iceberg. During the feverish
four years between the the aftermath of 9/11 and the aftermath of Bush’s
reelection in 2004, the rabid rightists in the White House treated the
Constitution like so much toilet paper. The country was at war, the enemy
was everywhere, and all available measures were justifiable.

We are convinced that the transgressions included not
only domestic eavesdropping, but withholding of information from Congress,
lying under oath, torture and blackmail of real and suspected opponents,
targeted killings of foreign officials and civilians, kidnapping and
disappearing
people
into
its
chain of secret prisons, and illegal financing to pay for all of the
above.

What Bush and his enthusiastic cohort conveniently
overlooked was that the provisions of the Constitution limiting the powers
of the
executive were inserted SPECIFICALLY to apply during times of strife,
war and other challenges to the state. Furthermore, in our world of multiple
smoking guns, indelible electronic paper trails and instant celebrity
for whistle-blowers, exposure of such egregious violations of the
law of the land cannot be avoided, only delayed.

This unraveling scandal also accounts for one of
the more curious odd couple pairing in recent news cycles.  At
first, we thought that Papa Bush was so constantly and publicly sucking
up to Big Bubba Bill Clinton simply as a way to diss his wayward son.  How
it must have galled Dubya to see his dear old Dad showering the approval
and camaderie that he, 43, so craved, on the morally corrupt nemesis
of his son’s political star.

But now the true motivation emerges from the fog of
family politics. 41 IS a loving father.  He is simply trying to
pre-negotiate a Nixon-style pardon for his wayward son in the event
of a second Clinton presidency! Brilliant political gamesmanship. Here’s
hoping it doesn’t work – we are looking forward to the George Bush
prison interviews…..