Bush-Gonzales Dance Around U.S. Constitution

From today's New York Times lead editorial "A Spy Program in From the Cold"

"There are some big unanswered questions. For one thing, because the new warrant process is secret, we don't know whether the court has issued a blanket approval for wiretapping, which would undermine the intent of the law, or whether the administration agreed to seek individual warrants...

We strongly agree with John Rockefeller IV, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that “the administration’s go-it-alone approach, effectively excluding Congress and the courts and operating outside the law, was unnecessary” and that the White House should turn over documents on the creation of the wiretapping program. If the 1978 law needs to be updated, that should happen in public, not in a secret court.

This administration long ago forfeited the public trust on these issues."

Shall Congress ask about any instance of the mis-use of U.S. Homeland Security?

Or shall they pretend that the civil liberties threat is merely theoretical?

Comments from

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/comments/display?contentID=AR2007011701256&start=81

If anyone really believes this will happen as stated then I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. All the Bush administration will do is throw a few bones at this court and the rest of the activity will go underground. Consider that all the various activities we learn about these days, NSA wiretapping, opening mail, the military becoming involved in domestic spying of US citizens, and so forth, were originally all part of that not so long ago, and Congressionally forbidden, program called Total Information Awareness. All that happened when the budget was zeroed out was it was broken up into pieces and placed in various departments and taken into the secret code word world. I have very little confidence that Bush and crowd have relinquished anything.

Since the FISA ruling on this new way to spy on Americans only lasts 90 days, it begs the question, then what ? Back to business as usual , down and dirty ? Congress must press for a full disclosure tomorrow, and if they dont get it, they should issue a arrest warrant for Contempt of Congress. Gonzales could of course plead the 5th Amendment since if he does tell the whole truth, it seems obvious he has broken the laws of the USA.

Lets not roll over to this Soviet regime now that they have retreated an inch. What are they trying to hide is the question. Just like when the Senate was taken over by Demos and Bush et al suddenly changed their tune on Enron. We knew that they were attempting to hide the massive fraud and theft and lies related to Enron by an abrupt change in policy. Here we have the same. They have been spying on political opponents with this evil regime they call anyone who opposes them as aiding terrorists and now want to stop any investigation by the Senate by tossing the program to this unconstitutional star chamber that itself must be shut down as a violation of our constitution.

Things like this somehow never cease to disturb me. Todays administration has all the red flags of the Soviet republics... interesting to note that the name Gosbezopastnost also known as the KGB translates as Department of Homeland Security. What is with all this whispering and the addiction to classifying all information if nobody is doing anything wrong? Why does the government have to spy on everybody as if we were hunting for political convicts to stuff the Gulag?

People......Please Read John Ashcrofts Never Again.....According to him we are all potential terrorists......Just say NATIONAL SECURITY and anything goes........Douglas Willinger is correct...