A news report prompts a panic-button press conference from Bush

[ProSense]

who makes a few 9/11 pronouncements to justify collecting the phone numbers of 10 million Americans. The wingnuts' response: move along, nothing to see here:

A Phone(y) Issue

35 minutes ago

Spying: Exploiting a leak timed with Michael Hayden's nomination as CIA director, a USA Today headline screams that his former agency, the NSA, has a "massive database" of your phone calls. It has no such thing.

snip...

In this case the data are used to study how terrorist networks organize and contact each other and their members. Such a list might be useful if we have the next Mohammed Atta's phone number and want to know all the numbers he has called or that have called him.
more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20060511/bs_ibd_ibd/2006511issues

[neoblues]

1. They're just doing their duty...

to ensure that American citizens are "safe".

Safe from the terrible threats of privacy, freedom, liberty, Democracy, law, the Constitution, education, decent working conditions, a decent job, a living wage... and so on. Soon, when they've finally saved us from the corrupting influence of "the middle class", we'll all be fine new members of America's new powerless subclass.

Meanwhile, we cling to the fantasy that our traditional institutions, laws and government are still in place--so any response to such anti-American activities should be made through the traditional processes. If our top leaders really have left our Democratic Republic behind in all but appearance, even if we can pressure our other leaders--such as Congress to insist government institiutions such as the Department of Justice, does it's job (and they haven't used their powers for a long time--whatever limited powers as they actually have), we have no hope that such agencies will respond (other than pretending to respond--if they even bother). The Bush Administration is in full control, after all the Department of Justice takes it's orders from... guess who.

This is why seeing the DOJ simply say 'okay, sorry to have bothered you' to the NSA when it says 'go away, you don't have the authority (clearance) to investigate us', is disturbing. It makes the illusion begin to show as being an illusion. Reality can be painful; more painful in certain ways than any of us has allowed ourselves to yet imagine. Even being as suspicious and alert as we possibly can doesn't mean we either fully grasp reality or have accepted it... It may be that hoping to resolve our governmental problem by the normal Democratic route is in fact clinging to an illusion of our own making; wishful thinking as it were.