Just When Bush Thought He’d Be King Again

Now we find out that the Prez secretly and illegally authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap Americans to search for terrorists. "I was frankly astonished by the story," national security law maven William C. Banks told the New York Times. “My head is spinning,” he added, referring to the news on Thursday that President Bush had authorized secret wiretaps of Americans shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Banks said that even given the Bush administration’s over-reaching in the past, the new revelation was a shock. It was a shocker to everyone who read it. The idiot-puppet in the White House actually signed a presidential order in 2002 that allows the National Security Agency to monitor, without warrants, the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of potentially thousands of people inside the United States. The NYT reported this morning that John C. Yoo who was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003 was thought to have helped write the justification for these illegal NSA wiretaps. He wrote a memo on September 25, 2001, which said “no statute passed by Congress can place any limits on the president's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing and nature of the response." The NYT said Yoo wouldn’t comment on the story. But Bradford A. Berenson, who was associate counsel to President Bush from 2001 to 2003, said Bush felt “it was incumbent on him to use every ounce of authority available to him to protect the American people." Oh brother! Don’t you feel safer knowing that George W. Bush who has mental problems gave hackers in the NSA the unlimited power to listen in on your phone calls and track your e-mail? Now, of course, dick Cheney and the White House waterboy, Karl Rove, will say that ordinary citizens and their ordinary messages were never the target for this wiretap authority. Which isn’t the point. As soon as the twit-twats in the NSA received the green light to do wiretaps, they could do anything they wanted. And if you think for one moment the NSA ever exercises restraint, forget about it. And the good news? On Friday, the Senate blocked the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, which gave the government unprecedented snoop and search powers after 9/11. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another, right George? Have a drink.