Still, it is highly entertaining to watch Junior Bush’s poodle-dogs and the twisted, distorted and (if I may use the word) tortured “logic” used to rationalize Dubya’s criminal activities. Seriously — this is better than Clinton’s re-definition of the word “is”. Highly entertaining, indeed! Bra-vo!

-timmy ramone

I might be able to take you seriously if you had 1) acknowledged that there is nothing new about Bush’s use of these powers, and 2) acknowledged that legal scholars themselves (including Sunstein on the Left) do not agree with you.

A warrant is required, by law, to use such surveillance technologies on Americans. The Bush Administration admits that it did not obtain the necessary warrants.

Simple as that.

Nobody is expressing shock over the existence of the technology. All of us want terrorists surveilled and caught. You guys, however, are out on a limb with the opinion that a President can authorize any act, even one that contravenes both law and Constitution. The onus is on you — how do you justify that view?

Fine, so let’s say they kill the program and there is an attack…who will Shumer blame?

Merely publishing the parallel 1998-1999 NYT and WAPO articles about ECHELON on a regular basis will assure the historical background is well documented — out of the mouths of the same MSM, no less. This will aid any Senatorial committee staff people that want to put perspective on this issue.

I hope the editorial staff puts a full court press on this one.

I can safely predict that the Democratic Party will be hurt by the investigation. Its leaders like Charles Schumer are in a damned if they do, and damned if they donít predicament. There is no way possible for them to satisfy both the hard left of their party and the so-called middle of the road voters. Whatever they say will come back to haunt them. Let the fun begin.

How does Schumer determine the difference between a felon and a whistleblowr? That is a real easy question to answer. The latter is a Democrat hard-liner while the former votes Republican.

What scares me more, and what seems to get no attention whatsoever, are the similar programs being run by private entities, such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, the Russian Mafia, etc. The technology is such that it’s practically possible for a private individual such as yours truly to write a program which scans the internet for information on individuals, stores it in a gigantic database, and applies statistical analysis to the results to find out all sorts of choice nuggets. This is well within the grasp of, say, GE or Citibank, not that I’ve ever heard any whispers in those particular directions.

Worrying about the US Government is just so 90′s.