NYT: Tap-Dancing as Fast as He Can

[kpete]

Editorial
Tap-Dancing as Fast as He Can

Published: July 20, 2006
This is how President Bush keeps his promise to deal with Congress in good faith on issues of national security and the balance of powers: He sends the attorney general to the Senate Judiciary Committee to stonewall, obfuscate and spin fairy tales.

Testifying on Tuesday after months of refusing to show up, Alberto Gonzales dodged questions about President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping operation. He refused to say whether it was the only time that Mr. Bush had chosen to ignore the 1978 law on electronic eavesdropping. In particular, he would not say whether it was true that the government had accumulated large amounts of data on Americans’ routine telephone calls. “The programs and activities you ask about, to the extent that they exist, would be highly classified,” Mr. Gonzales intoned.

Mr. Gonzales did answer when he was asked who had derailed a Justice Department investigation, requested by Congress, into Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail without a warrant. Mr. Gonzales said that Mr. Bush himself did it, by refusing to grant the needed security clearances to the lawyers involved.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/opinion/20thu1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

[BeFree]

1. He also said

Congress did not give the president war powers in the IWR. Did the NYT print that?

[seafan]

2. This part is particularly galling:

From Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' smoke and mirrors act before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 18, 2006:

But even that seeming candor was shrouded in fog. Mr. Gonzales gave the committee documents that argued there was no need to investigate because the eavesdropping was the “subject of extensive oversight by the executive branch and Congress.” Actually, the program is supervised only by the agencies that are running it. The Congressional intelligence committees were not briefed until long after Mr. Bush refused the security clearances.

According to the documents, a “strict limit” had to be put on the number of people given clearances for “non-operational reasons.” That sounds nicely cloak-and-dagger, but does not explain why Mr. Bush granted immediate clearance to the lawyers charged with finding out who told The Times about the wiretapping in the first place.

America is fed up with these criminals, all acting to protect each other.

[crim son]

3. Is America fed up?

Didn't Rasmussen just give him a 45% approval rating? 4.5% would be too high, if we were truly fed up. I can't understand why, but americans keep forgiving and forgetting when it comes to the Bush administration.