king george and his secret police

The extremists on the far-right are defending Bush and his spying on American citizens (I heard Rush asking a caller today what good his civil rights would be if he were killed by a terrorist), but some former Republican loyalists are beginning to see what’s going on. This afternoon on the Diane Rehm Show, Bruce Fein, constitutional scholar and former Associate Deputy Attorney General under President Reagan, said that Bush is claiming “more power than King George III had at the time of the revolution, in asserting the theory that anything the president thinks is helpful to fighting the war against terrorism he can do.” (Audio is available here.)

Senator Barbara Boxer agrees, and goes so far as to say that what he’s done appears to be an impeachable offense. In preperation for just such an opportunity, Howard Dean announced earlier today that he has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get at all the relevant White House and NSA documents. Here’s a clip from Dean’s letter to his supporters:

…By now you have probably heard the news that George Bush is using the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance on American citizens without the consent of any court. After initially refusing to confirm the story, the President has admitted to personally overseeing this domestic spying program for years and he says he intends to continue the program.

These actions explicitly violate a law designed to protect US citizens. But the administration says that other laws somehow allow for this unprecedented use of a foreign intelligence agency to spy on Americans right here in the United States. According to reports, political appointees in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote still-classified legal opinions laying out the supposed justification for this program…

The most disgusting thing of all (well, maybe not the most disgusting thing of all) is that the New York Times knew about Bush’s illegal eavesdropping before the 2004 election and chose not to run the story. (They’re only running the story now, it seems, because one of their reporters is getting ready to release the information in a book… According to Newsweek, Bush called the Editor and Publisher of the Times to Washington last week to ask that they continue to sit on the story, but by that point it had become clear that his request was motivated less by concern over ongoing terrorism investigations that could be compromised than by the President’s fear of being exposed as a liar and a criminal.)

If lying about getting your cock sucked is an impeachable offense, I find it hard to believe that lying about something as serious as this wouldn’t qualify as well… At the very least, I thnk that most Americans would agree that this calls for a Congressional investigation into the actions of the administration and the role of the NSA. Let’s just hope that the American people don’t allow this story to disappear in the hussle and bussle of the holiday season.