The New Road

Gladly giving up your rights

It's interesting to note this new talking point; "I would gladly give up my rights to George Bush if it helps him. Because if a mushroom cloud goes up over D.C. then nobody will have any rights."

Ah, yes. Well, as it turns out, that while that is personally interesting to note, your willingness to abandon your rights is neither important nor relevant.

You see, there already was a FISA court that Bush could have used to infringe on your rights. This super secret court took over 16,000 request to wire tap and refused only 4 (not 4 thousand, just 4.) In addition it allowed you to be wire tapped for up to 72 hours before the court was even asked to provide a warrant.

So, in fact, there was no reason for Bush to go outside the law to get wiretaps on you.

Oh, yeah, and Osama bin Laden, isn't an American citizen. He doesn't have so much with the rights thing. We can go around tapping him all we want.

No, there are only two questions. First, is the President breaking the law an impeachable offense. Why, yes it is.

And second, why did he do it? The options are:

1. He didn't know about the FISA court - Clearly not. He mentioned it in his campaign speech.
2. The court was too slow - Definitely not.
3. It wasn't wire tapping in the strict technical sense - Hmm... Interesting. Tell me more.
4. Somebody else ordered the program - Very interesting, given our boy enjoys his bike rides a little too much and has little time for the whole governationing thing
5. Just because he could - Sounds the silliest, but probably the most likely.

I subscribe to the just because he could school. In my head the scenario plays out this way. It's just a few months after 9/11. His approval rating is 80%. We are in Afghanistan. Things are looking great. He is rocking. Somebody talks to him about wire tapping and he gets irritated by the fact that he has to go through some silly court to get permission to tap.

It's called imperial hubris and it's what lead to Watergate. At the time of Watergate the Republicans were asking, "Why would he do it? We won in a landslide." Good question. Turns out, he just wanted to do it. Why? Nixon was a power-mad paranoid freak. Not unlike our twitchy fearless leader. Nixon didn't need the bugs to win. He just wanted to hear them sob as they were defeated. It wasn't a need thing, it was a power thing.

As to why Bush didn't call it off when it was clear that his power had vanished and a leak of the program was inevitable? Probably just never occured to him. On a slowly sinking boat it's tough to know when exactly to jump overboard. There is always a potential that you could fix the boat.

As to the original point:

"Those who would surrender fundamental liberties in exchange for a little security deserve neither."

-Benjamin Franklin