Ruben Navarette: "First, let's get the foreigners "

[Gidney N Cloyd]

Local paper runs this guy's column a couple times a month. He usually is very supportive of Bush but he seems to have turned sharply with this piece. Like so many other stalwarts of late.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/navarrette/20051221-9999-lz1e21navarr.html

The people invading your privacy are from the government, and they're here to help you. They just don't want you to know they're helping you. No one could ever accuse the Bush administration of not knowing how to keep a secret. Whether it is trying to keep under wraps the proceedings of deportation hearings, or hiding the existence of CIA-run secret prisons on foreign soil, keeping a lid on things is what this bunch does best.

And don't fall for the line about how this is necessary with the country at war. Loose lips sink ships, and all that. Even before the war on terror, the administration withheld the names of energy industry executives who met with Vice President Dick Cheney to create national energy policy.

Why all the secrecy? Maybe because Team Bush sees the nosy busybodies in the Fourth Estate as the enemy. Here's the latest thing the in-the-dark American taxpayer isn't supposed to know the first thing about: that President Bush – a few months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – issued an executive order authorizing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans and other individuals inside the United States without having to convince a judge that there is probable cause to issue a warrant authorizing the surveillance, as required by law.