I just noticed he coined a new word on AAR. He and David Bender chuckled about it, but Dean drew the wrath of Pat Roberts who wrote him a very firm letter about it.
What Dean said in the AAR interview:
http://howardempowered.bmgbiz.net/deanpoliticallydirect.htmlBender: Well, that sounds like a plug for a movie: The Great Local Candidate near you. Ken Melhman, speaking of people who can go over the top, asked this rhetorical question last week, and it occurred to me I should ask you so that you can have a chance to answer it. Do you really think that when the NSA is listening in on terrorists planning attacks on America, that they need to hang up when those terrorists dial sleeper cells in the United States?
Dean: That of course is a ridiculous question. (Bender laughs, "You think?") In fact, if the president *wanted* to obey the law, he could have. The law says that you don't need a warrant in an emergency to listen in on a terrorist conversation. You can get that warrant afterwards. This president doesn't believe he has to go to the courts at all. You know what's more scary? This is really frightening. Now the government is trying to find out what you look at on the internet. They asked Google, who fortunately refused, to provide a million names to them, and their internet habits. That means if you go to some web site that they think is dishonest, they'll know it. Or that they think is defense filled. Now, supposedly this is a child porn sting. Well, fine, go to the child porn people and find out who's looking at that, if that's what you want to look at. This basically lets them have access to whatever they want--it's the Patriot Act, looking at people's library habits, on steroids. And given the persecution of various church people by the IRS, and given the persecution by the FBI and the eavesdropping on people they disagree with, I think that's pretty dangerous to be able to look at whatever you want. Whatever you've looked at on Google they want that too in the government. This government has become a more and more Nixonian and Agnewonian, if I may.
Bender: Agnewonian?! (Bender and Dean laugh) May I quote you on that? I really love the word.
Well, that really got the goat of Pat Roberts, so he sent Dean a letter. Guess he doesn't have a sense of humor. I just saw a post at Kos that the Congressional Research Service, the non-partisan research arm of Congress, has issued two devastating reports on the domestic spying program...Sorry Pat Roberts.
Here is what was in the letter to Dean from Pat:
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/13788929.htmBut in a written statement issued at about the time he was addressing the chamber, Roberts admonished Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean for comparing the Bush administration’s domestic wiretapping without warrants to the “dark days” of President Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew.
Roberts called the remark “ludicrous,” and said that Nixon had singled out American citizens engaged in activities protected by the First Amendment, not “enemies that had attacked the United Stated states and killed thousands of Americans.”
He continued: “Every American should understand, our terrorist adversaries think of us as dust. Think about that. In their extremist absolutism, our lives, and lives of those we hold dear, have no value. The irony of it is that, in their minds, we are evil, which in turn justifies their acts of evil.”
Guess Pat Roberts did not like the word Agnewonian.
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