Like H20 Man and I brought up, smart people are starting to notice that we live in gangster times:
It's my party and I'll spy if I want toDecember 26, 2005
By Glen McAdoo
Lahontan Valley News and Fallon Eagle Standard (Nevada)
"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"- George W. Bush April 20, 2004.
At the very time of that statement, George W. Bush was personally overseeing wiretaps without any court orders.
For all of you who still claim this president doesn't lie, this must come as a shock. For the rest of us it just comes as another "we told you so." He admitted as much the other day when he vowed to continue the practice of spying on American citizens whom he suspects may have ties to Al Qaeda.
The problem is, who is deciding just what amounts to "ties to Al Qaeda?" Not the courts. George W. Bush is above the law. He and he alone will decide. Okay, he may consult with a crony or two. As Richard Nixon once said, "if the president does it, it can't be illegal." Right, George?
How times have changed. With a few exceptions, the most outspoken Republicans who were screaming for the head of Bill Clinton for lying about an extra-marital encounter, claiming no one was above the law, are singing a different tune now that it's their guy who seems to believe he is above the law.
CONTINUED...
http://www.lahontanvalleynews.com/article/20051226/Opinion/112260005 Maybe good ol' Bob Byrd will get some in Congress to notice.
IMPEACH BUSH: NO PRESIDENT IS ABOVE THE LAW, NOT IN CHILE, NOT IN THE U.S.
Bush’s Slippery Slope Leads To A Police State, Plain And Simple(Dec. 21, 2005, Ed. Note: It is a sad state of affairs to have the President of the United States admit to the nation and to the world that he is spying on the citizens he is elected to safeguard.
It is worse to have the President aggressively justify his “big brother” politics in the name of an ill-begotten, counter-productive war on terrorism that, by his own admission, will go on for years and years and years. It would seem that George Orwell’s “1984” is now at hand; that Bush is aiming to outdo Chile’s Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who also justified his assault on the human rights of Chileans in the higher name of a “war on terrorism.”
The slippery slope that Bush has embarked upon leads to a police state, plain and simple.
Bush argues that his powers as a president in “times of war” are plenary – that is, full, complete, without limit. Yet the very soul of a democracy is the equal powers that the three branches of government share, each serving as a counterweight to the messianic impulses that any one of the other branches might dare assume.
How can President Bush claim to want to instill a working democracy in Iraq, while at the same time violating our own U.S. laws, our own system of checks and balances? Terrorism is a serious risk to our nation, but a far greater threat is the centralization of American political power in the hands of any single branch of the government.
CONTINUED w Byrd's speech to the U.S. Senate...
http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=10503&topic_id=1 Think! We live in a time when a newspaper in Chile has to remind America of the dangers of a CIA-induced dictatorship!
This isn't ironic. It's tragic.