thoughts on the wiretapping thing

[amul]

I've been spending most of the day reading up on the wiretapping thing. As near as I can tell, and this is after about five solid hours of reading news articles and interviews, the argument goes something like this:

The Law: You cannot wiretap a US citizen without a written court order.

Nixon: Well, that's only for the FBI. I hereby empower a new branch of government to do the exact same thing as the old branches, but without all those messy legal complications.

The Law: Nice try, but you still can't tap a citizen's phone without an expressly written warrant stating who, why, when, and for how long.

Reagan: Well, what if I try to buy you off?

The Law: Then I'm just going to have to nominate a subcommittee to watch both of us and make sure we don't become corrupt.

Clinton: But it'd be really nice if we could.

The Law: See, there's this little thing called "due process." We kind of founded an entire country based on the fact that we didn't have it before.

George W: Fuck that noise. I'm just going to write a law that says I can.

The Law: You can't do that. You're not the Legislative Branch.

George W: ....and then I'm going to create another FBI-like group to watch over the FBI and the NSA and do all the things that my shiny new law lets them do.

The Law: No, you don't understand. You can't do that. That's an impeachable offense. It says so, right here.

George W: Nonsense, you get impeached for blowjobs, not crimes against the country. Hey, guys, look! I made a law!

Telecoms: Ooooooh. Pretty.


Pardon me if that version seems a little biased to you.

Comments

[infomorph.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, it's not the Democrats are weak or whipped, it's that in fact for the most part they really have same ruling class interests as the Republicans. Look how many of them supported the Iraq war and Patriot Act in the first place. They're not losing out much -- their sons and daughters aren't being killed in Iraq, they get their corp kickbacks from the war economy, and they also get the same job security that the current police state/NSA spying provides (keeping dissidents in line).