Winning on wiretaps

While Dubya scampers about the halls of the White House with a tiny, bent power erection still poking at the navy twill of his presidential trousers over the Senate and House approval of his new spying bill this past weekend, his glee isn’t enough to distract from his ultimate goal. With the corpse of hope for a Democrat resistance hardly cold, Bush announced that the powers handed to him weren’t quite enough.

While California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren condemned the bill for granting the Attorney General “the ability to wiretap anybody, any place, any time without court review, without any checks and balances,” Bush called it a “narrowly focused statute” and insisted his “work was not done.” The bill was approved with a six-month validity period and alters the rules of law defined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Bush said he’ll push Congress to make all changes permanent and ask for additional protections for “those who are alleged to have assisted our nation following the attacks of September 11, 2001.” Or in plain-speak, he wants to make sure the corporations that helped in his illegal wiretapping won’t be held liable.

by Scott Saxon