Bush's Protect America Bill Bull
Submitted by dlindorff on Fri, 2008-02-15 15:45
By Dave Lindorff
President Bush has turned to the cheapest lies in an effort to protect himself from being exposed as a criminal in the ongoing campaign to have the National Security Agency spy at will on Americans.
Claiming—without a scintilla of evidence to back him up—that there are people planning a “much worse attack” than 9-11 on America, he says he must not only have free rein to unleash the NSA
spymasters on American telephone and internet communications, but also a grant of complete immunity from prosecution for such spying for the telecom industry.
The Senate, of course, with solid backing from Republicans and critical backing too from a significant number of treacherous Democrats (some of whom, like Intelligence Committee head Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) have gotten significant donations from the telecom industry), has already given the president the bill he wants. It now is before the House, where some Democrats and a few Republicans who still remember there’s supposed to be a Bill of Rights, are resisting passage of the cynically named Protect America bill.
The obvious lie that the president is spreading is made evident by the fact that there is no heightened alert status—not at airports, not at the border, not at city police and fire departments.
But furthermore, if nothing were passed, it would have no impact at all on the NSA’s current spying and monitoring activities. If there really were evidence of some kind of attack in preparation, the NSA would already be monitoring it under existing authority, and would be able to continue that activity without a warrant at least until next September! And even if the authority to monitor without a warrant were not granted at that point, the administration has from now until then to obtain a warrant, which it could do anytime it wants to by going to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
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http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/31051
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