THIS MODERN WORLD

Backstory here. Video here. Hannity is such a scumbag.

This bit from today’s NSA spy hearing would be clever if it weren’t so stupid :

SESSIONS: With regard to history — you made reference to history — isn’t it true, of course, President Washington instructed his army to find ways to intercept letters from British operatives, that President Lincoln issued warrantless tapping of telegraph communications during the Civil War to try to identify troop movements of the enemy? Is it true that President Wilson authorized the military to intercept all telephone and telegraph traffic going into and out of the United States?

GONZALES: That is correct.

SESSIONS: And that President Roosevelt instructed the government to use listening devices to learn the plans of spies in the United States, and that he gave the military the authority to access, without review, without warrant, all telecommunications, quote, “passing between the United States and any foreign country”?

GONZALES: That is correct, sir.

SESSIONS: What I would say to my colleagues and to the American people is, under FISA and other standards that we are using today, we have far more restraints on our military and the executive branch than history has demonstrated.

So how were Washington, Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt bound by a law passed in 1978? Oh wait, they weren’t , but Bush is. Perhaps someone should ask Gonzales about the legal weight that our constitution affords to a clever historical analogy and whether said analogy is ever sufficient enough to overrule an act of Congress. Then again, that line of questioning might tip people off to the fact that these hearings are mostly a charade orchestrated for the cameras and that this GOP-run Judiciary Committee won’t do anything to stop the President’s criminal behavior beyond having a couple token Republicans seethe with faux-outrage.

A lot of people wonder how exactly revelations of warrantless spying have harmed national security. I wasn’t able to watch the Senate hearings all the way through today, but at one point I did catch Gonzales giving an answer: the terrorists, you see, might forget about the possibility of surveillance, and speak openly about their plans — if only the media weren’t constantly reminding them.

So there you have it.

… Here’s a transcript. This really is quite remarkable — the Attorney General of the United States is offering the sort of justification that you’d expect to get from some not-very-bright right wing blogger.

This is exactly right:

I don’t trust the Bush Administration to do the right thing. Period.

That’s the bottom line for me with the illegal NSA domestic spying mess and every other problem that has come down the pike: I don’t trust this Preznit to make a decision based on what is right for the American public — but, rather, I believe this Administration will do whatever it takes, no matter how illegal or immoral, to prop themselves up and maintain power. Perhaps it’s my own personal bias — I haven’t felt this way about any other Republican Administration, to be honest, so it’s not a liberal versus conservative thing, but something that I find inherently wrong about this particular group of malignant cronies.

Sell out liberty? Check. Manipulate religion, and thus true believers, into doing whatever is necessary to maintain a hold on power? Check. Cynical Orwellian “truthiness?” Oh yeah…check. Ruin someone’s life if they get in your way, including not giving a rat’s ass about the consequences of using wedge issues to divide and conquer? Check. Ends justifies whatever means necessary? Check and double check.

Which is why this is so disturbing:

Feb. 13, 2006 issue – In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States. Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, went to a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week to defend President George W. Bush’s surveillance program. During the briefing, said administration and Capitol Hill officials (who declined to be identified because the session was private), California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Bradbury questions about the extent of presidential powers to fight Al Qaeda; could Bush, for instance, order the killing of a Qaeda suspect known to be on U.S. soil? Bradbury replied that he believed Bush could indeed do this, at least in certain circumstances.

Newsweek:

Newly released court papers could put holes in the defense of Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, in the Valerie Plame leak case. Lawyers for Libby, and White House allies, have repeatedly questioned whether Plame, the wife of White House critic Joe Wilson, really had covert status when she was outed to the media in July 2003. But special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found that Plame had indeed done “covert work overseas” on counterproliferation matters in the past five years, and the CIA “was making specific efforts to conceal” her identity, according to newly released portions of a judge’s opinion.