"We're trying to protect America," say the president and his defenders. "Anyone who believes that we'd spy on ordinary Americans are just a bunch of paranoid, Bush-hating leftie whackos. We only spy on people who are Evil-doers, not on law-abiding Americans. Just trust us."
Yes, trust them.
The only people spied upon are Evil-doers, like those notoriously violent Quakers. There's no way they'd spy on completely harmless people like vegans and Catholics
I guess the spied upon should feel honored: Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr, a civil rights and anti-war activist, was long spied upon as well.
So why exactly should we trust the people running this country? After they've given us so many reasons to do the opposite.
If the administration is doing nothing wrong, then they can stand up, defend their policies and expose them to the light of day. It seems to me that if the domestic spying were so important, wouldn't the administration want to shout about it from the rooftops? Wouldn't this be an effective means of deterrence, of scaring the terrorists, of telling them, 'Don't plan anything here because we'll catch you.' If they were convinced of the program's legality, wouldn't they do this?
Instead, the administration demanded that The New York Times not run a story on this arguably illegal domestic spying. Sadly, The Times aquiesed to the bullying for over a year.
Some apologists will say that Bush can do whatever he thinks necessary to protect us. Law and the Constitution don't matter in times of (undeclared) war. And it's up to the president alone to decide when the law and Constitution can be suspended and when they can be re-instated. It's up to the president alone to decide when the (undeclared) war begins and ends.
Apologists argue that only whiny partisan Democrats complain about it. Whiny Democrats like Rep. Roscoe Bartlett and Sen. Arlen Specter. Oh wait, they're Republicans. The apologists add that secretly briefing a couple of Congressmen and claiming unlimited executive authority is sufficient to void a legally adopted statute and that if the briefed Democrats had a problem with it, why didn't they object before? Oh wait, they did.
It's not just Democrats, progressives, spy court judges, civil libertarians and independent-minded Republicans who have concerns about the domestic spying and the way it's being carried out.
Some NSA [National Security Agency] officials were so concerned about the legality of the program that they refused to participate, the Times said. Questions about the legality of the program led the administration to temporarily suspend it last year and impose new restrictions, notes the AP.
As one commentator notes, the possibly illegal domestic spying is bad enough but there's something more dangerous.
[T]he administration relies on its own notions of its legal authority (courtesy of the White House counsel and the attorney general) and invokes its responsibility for protecting American lives. The administration line is this: The legal points are arguable, the Congress has been told, and the court of public opinion will vindicate the president.
This is what becomes genuinely disturbing: This blanket assertion of authority has no discernible limits. Accepting it confers on this president -- or any president -- the powers of autocracy.
The most disturbing is the administration's belief that it alone decides what powers it has. But after claiming to have the right to torture, this belief isn't new. Yet it's still extremely dangerous. The only reason for hope is public opinion. While Americans were eager to give the president a blank check for most of the last four years, Americans are generally starting angry about the inevitable excesses and abuses.
It's about time!
Update: Speaking of lawlessness and its consequences, an Italian court has issued a European Union wide arrest warrant for 22 CIA agents accused of kidnapping a Muslim cleric in Milan and sending him to Egypt where he was allegedly tortured. The CIA has refused to comment on the case. International arrest warrants were instituted following the 9/11 attacks as a tool to fight terrorism.
Second update: And just to prove the administration's claim that the war on terrorism truly isn't a war on Islam, federal law enforcement officials have been engaging in warrantless spying in mosques. I'm sure that will encourage law-abiding Muslims to want to go out of their way to volunteer information to the authorities. Or Else!
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