Bush Goes a Trolling

Bush Goes a Trolling

“The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities,” (Bush) said. “Our efforts are focused on Al Qaeda and their known associates.” – Bush Says U.S. Spying Is Not Widespread

Bye-bye America the beautiful – Hello trolling.

I guess it all depends on your definition of “trolling.”
But if Bush has his way we'll never know what's going on.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility just ended their
investigation of the illegal wiretapping saga because they can't get security
clearance from the Justice Department to view their lawyers' roll in it. Go
to TalkLeft for the
legal mumbo jumbo because it all sounds just too Catch-22 to me.

As for Bush's latest babbling today, I'm with Yglesias on this one. It's
a big fat non-denial
denial. Yet another walk down memory lane, complete with presidential sycophant,
Senator Pat Roberts appearing on “Lou Dobbs,” talking about keeping America safe, while jettisoning 200
years of Constitutional history simultaneously. That's our president, with the help of the
Republican Party. People who are engaged in tapping the phones of tens of
millions of Americans in a just in case scenario that we're supposed to buy
is good for this country.

It goes along with their let's bomb Iraq, just in case. Oh, and throw in Iran, too, no need to talk. It's
only a just in case kaboom! scenario, you know, because we want to be safe.

But who's going to protect us from the president? Hello, Congress, anybody home?

Hmmmm… Does that mean we can now start a big fat gun database to
track everyone's gun purchases just in case somebody shoots someone and we want
to do a background on all their gas purchases? Can't wait until conservatives
think about that one. Bush will lose the two Republicans still backing him in
the Ozarks.

Jonathan Turley has been particularly alarming recently, saying today on Keith
Olberman that he doesn't see how this wiretapping operation is legal and that
it breaks federal law. (Remember that James Comey and John Ashcroft balked at
the original wiretapping program, Hayden's brainchild, so the Bush administration just quit asking
for authorization.) As for Bush saying he would not authorize anything illegal,
Turley said that one was a “chuckle,” because the original wiretapping
program was illegal. Turley spent a day looking for the legal authority Bush
has to orchestrate this latest policy, but he couldn't find any.

What we've got is a president that is a one man legal, legislative and judicial
branch. Hey, there's a name for that… cue Jack Cafferty.

President Bush today denied that the government is “mining or trolling through the personal lives of innocent Americans,” as Democrats expressed outrage over a news report describing a National Security Agency program that has collected vast amounts of telephone records. The article, in USA Today, said that the agency did not listen to the calls, but secretly obtained information on numbers dialed by “tens of millions of Americans” and used it for “data mining” — computer analysis of large amounts of information for clues or patterns to terrorist activity. Making a hastily scheduled appearance in the White House, Mr. Bush did not directly address the collection of phone records, except to say that “new claims” had been raised about surveillance. He said all intelligence work was conducted “within the law” and that domestic conversations were not listened to without a court warrant. “The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities,” he said. “Our efforts are focused on Al Qaeda and their known associates.” Bush Says U.S. Spying Is Not Widespread