Bush To Congress: Piss Off

I'm not sure precisely what it was that finally flipped the switch for the NYT -- maybe having the right-wing blogsphere call for the execution of editors, writers, and photographers for such "crimes" as reporting on Bush's domestic spying program or printing authorized pictures of Rumsfeld's summer mansion finally clued the paper in to the nature of Bush and his supporters. Whatever it was, we can only hope it lasts. Here's their reaction to the Attorney General's disgraceful performance the other day:

Tap-Dancing as Fast as He Can
Published: July 20, 2006

This is how President Bush keeps his promise to deal with Congress in good faith on issues of national security and the balance of powers: He sends the attorney general to the Senate Judiciary Committee to stonewall, obfuscate and spin fairy tales.

Testifying on Tuesday after months of refusing to show up, Alberto Gonzales dodged questions about President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping operation. He refused to say whether it was the only time that Mr. Bush had chosen to ignore the 1978 law on electronic eavesdropping. In particular, he would not say whether it was true that the government had accumulated large amounts of data on Americans’ routine telephone calls. “The programs and activities you ask about, to the extent that they exist, would be highly classified,” Mr. Gonzales intoned.

Mr. Gonzales did answer when he was asked who had derailed a Justice Department investigation, requested by Congress, into Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail without a warrant. Mr. Gonzales said that Mr. Bush himself did it, by refusing to grant the needed security clearances to the lawyers involved.

But even that seeming candor was shrouded in fog. Mr. Gonzales gave the committee documents that argued there was no need to investigate because the eavesdropping was the “subject of extensive oversight by the executive branch and Congress.” Actually, the program is supervised only by the agencies that are running it. The Congressional intelligence committees were not briefed until long after Mr. Bush refused the security clearances.

Supervised only by the agencies that are running it -- isn't that how this whole junta works all the time? Oil companies write energy policy in secret, big pharm pays the people responsible for determining drug safety, agricultural support boondoggles turn out to have been created by a total lack of enforcement, and now, the agencies running secret domestic spying are "supervising" themselves. Well, hell, we should just trust them because, Goddess knows, the junta that fucked up Iraq, let New Orleans drown, and can't account for the millions that it just handed over to Haliburton is bound to do a fair, legal, and professional job of spying on Americans.

And, WTF is up with this: Mr. Gonzales did answer when he was asked who had derailed a Justice Department investigation, requested by Congress, into Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail without a warrant. Mr. Gonzales said that Mr. Bush himself did it, by refusing to grant the needed security clearances to the lawyers involved.


Can you imagine if Bill Clinton had derailed a Justice Deparment investigation into Whitewater or Monicagate?? The press, the Republicans, and, of course, Losing Joe Lieberman would have gone apeshit. But, what the hell, those were really important issues involving ancient land deals and sex and here we're just talking about actual impeachable offenses and violations of the Americans' most basic rights.