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POINDEXTER CAN STILL GET A JOB??
What's next?
Undermining our country to save it
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
AUSTIN - The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
Dallas Fort Worth Star TelegramThirty-five years ago, Richard Milhous Nixon, who was crazy as a bullbat, and J. Edgar Hoover, who wore women's underwear, decided that some Americans had unacceptable political opinions. So they set our government to spying on its own citizens, basically those who were deemed insufficiently like Crazy Richard Milhous.
For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain Richard III grandeur to Nixon's collapse because he was also a man of notable talents.
There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this president, the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and Cons ution.
The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the president, and he considers that sufficient justification for whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo who tell him that whatever he wants to do is legal.
The creepy part is the overlap. Damned if they aren't still here, after all these years, the old Nixon hands -- Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the whole gang whose yearning for authoritarian government rose like a stink over the Nixon years. Imperial executive. Bring back those special White House guard uniforms. Cheney, like some malignancy that cannot be cured, back at the same old stand, pushing the same old agenda.
Of course, they tell us we have to be spied on for our own safety, so they can catch the terrorists who threaten us all.
Thirty-five years ago, they nabbed a film star named Jean Seberg and a bunch of people running a free breakfast program for poor kids in Chicago. This time, they're onto the Quakers. We are not safer.
We would be safer, as the 9-11 Commission has so recently reminded us, if some obvious and necessary precautions were taken at both nuclear and chemical plants -- but that is not happening because those industries contribute to Republican candidates. Republicans do not ask their contributors to spend a lot of money on obvious and necessary steps to protect public safety. They wiretap instead.
You will be unsurprised to learn that, first, they lied. They didn't do it. Well, OK, they did it, but not very much at all. Well, OK, more than that. A lot more than that. OK, millions of private e-mail and telephone calls every hour, and all medical and financial records.
You may recall that in 2002 it was revealed that the Pentagon had started a giant data-mining program called Total Information Awareness (TIA), intended to search through vast databases "to increase information coverage by an order of magnitude."
From credit cards to vet reports, Big Brother would be watching us. This dandy program was under the control of Adm. John Poindexter, convicted of five felonies during Iran-contra, all overturned on a technicality. This administration really knows where to go for good help -- it ought to bring back Brownie.
Everybody decided that TIA was a terrible idea, and the program was theoretically shut down. As often happens with this administration, it turned out that they just changed the name and made the program less visible. Data-mining was a popular buzzword at the time, and the administration was obviously hot to have it. Bush established a secret program under which the National Security Agency could bypass the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court and begin eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.
As many have patiently pointed out, the entire program was unnecessary because the FISA court is both prompt and accommodating. There is virtually no possible scenario that would make it difficult or impossible to get a FISA warrant -- it has granted 19,000 warrants and rejected only a handful.
I don't like to play scary games where we all stay awake late at night, telling each other scary stories -- but there's a reason we have never given our government this kind of power. As the late Sen. Frank Church said, "That capability could at any time be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capacity to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide." And if a dictator took over, the NSA "could enable it to impose total tyranny."
Then we always get that dreadful goody-two-shoes response, "Well, If you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about, do you?"
Folks, we know this program is being and will be misused. We know it from the past record and current reporting. The program has already targeted vegans and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- and if those aren't outposts of al Qaeda, what is? Could this be more pathetic?
This could scarcely be clearer. Either the president of the United States is going to have to understand and admit that he has done something very wrong, or he will have to be impeached. The first time this happened, the ins utional response was magnificent. The courts, the press, the Congress all functioned superbly.
Anyone think we're up to that again? Then whom do we blame when we lose the republic?
POINDEXTER CAN STILL GET A JOB??
Seriously though.
Has he crossed the line of "high crimes and misdemenors" yet?
What WILL it take for Bush to get impeached?
Clinton lies about a BJ, Bush subverts the ing cons ution, but since he's a Republican he has the FAUX News channel to front for him and tons of mindless drones to toe the party line.
grrrr......
Lets face it, there won't be a serious investigation unless the Republican-controlled congress is somehow cohersed to do there jobs and protect the rights and freedoms that our boys in Iraq are supposed to be dying to protect.
yes lets just out all our intelligence gathering sources.. so you liberals can be happy that bush is impeached.... I guess in times of war... we shouldn't protect americans from attacks "by all means necessary"...
You use Molly Ivans as your role model. Oh, my. That woman is where she
should be: in Austin. Wonder who she copied this column from?
Bush has done nothing to be impeached for. Well maybe protecting the libs ass too.
Now that is a thought....HMMMMMMMM!
Funny how the WH has never had a problem with intelligence leaks that benefited them. The Khan-Pakistan WMD leak before the election, the Plame leak. Where is the probe by the AG for those leaks?
How to tell if your phone is tapped
^^^what a moron Bush is
Yeah he is so dumb. But he keeps kicking the dimm-o-craps where it^^^
hurts, at the ballot box. Here he is still running about 50 percent
approval rating and the dimm-o-craps have slung everything they could
think of and some that others thought of at him. Don't you ever
wonder where you are at at any given time. Thought Not!
^^^ are you gonna start posting something that changes the fact that Bush is a liar and the most incompitent president ever?
^^not really necessary. Most Americans knows he hasn't lied. Only a few like you
think or say that he has. And you really don't count for much. Especially at the
ballot box.
This ballot box?
This is a Bush quote,
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act,
-President Bush
So is he lying now, or lying back then?
So was he for a wiretap before he was against it?
or vice versa?
SA210, not only are you the biggest wagon in this forum but you're nothing but a tool basket.
I don't give a what you think of the president. GO feed the homeless or do something noble.
I guess a independent counselor by the justice department into the plame leak case isn't good enough for you dan... lolFunny how the WH has never had a problem with intelligence leaks that benefited them. The Khan-Pakistan WMD leak before the election, the Plame leak. Where is the probe by the AG for those leaks?
SA210=stuck under a bridgeThis is a Bush quote,
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act,
-President Bush
So is he lying now, or lying back then?
So was he for a wiretap before he was against it?
or vice versa?
town, leave me alone, go hit on some other men.
I like how u avoided the question. You know the truth about your president.
^^^This is a Bush quote,
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act,
-President Bush
So is he lying now, or lying back then?
So was he for a wiretap before he was against it?
or vice versa?
You see this moron!
This is why you should stick to photoshoping images instead of debating issues.
You've got to be the biggest numbnut not to know anything about the history of wiretapping.
If Bush should be impeached for wiretapping, so should've Clinton, Carter, Reagan, and JFK as well as Roosevelt been impeached.
But in asmuch as you have a single clue about politics, all due to the fact that you read partisan material and attend granola rallies, you don't know what the you're talking about.
Bush is wiretapping Terrorist.
Kennedy wiretapped Martin Luther King.
And you say the first is evil and incompetent.
Do us all a favor and just stick to photoshoping.
^^^, I'll get back to u Gaytown, i gotta go right nowactually it's a meeting about the homeless
I do leave you alone, but you always post after i do, so i think you should practice what you preach.
As far as hitting on men, you do that yourself pretty well. After you came along on this board, Boutons hasn't had a reason to purchase toilet paper.
I have answered you on many occasions, you just asking the same oldI like how u avoided the question. You know the truth about your president.
questions. You really are stuck under a bridge.
Good, and while you're at that, go feed the homeless instead of being the unpaid asswipe of bOutons on this forum.^^^, I'll get back to u, i gotta go right now
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