It's about the law

I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency [the NSA] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

--Senator Frank Church, 1975

What Bush and his supporters don't seem to understand is that the kerfuffle around domestic spying has nothing to do with its effectiveness. There is no doubt that the NSA is highly qualified to data mine phone and internet communications to look for clues, and that by so doing, they may be able to uncover a terrorist plot. The issue is that it is against the laws of the country to do, as they currently stand. The Administration's rebuttal to this argument, which goes something along the lines of, "yeah but we need to do this," doesn't work. What is the difference between the US and a dictatorship? The rule of law applies here, not the rule of men. Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, all seem to have lost sight that if we do not follow the law, and if our government agencies and executors are not held accountable to the law, then we are a lawless nation, no better than a bunch of nomads in the desert. In other words, the terrorists have already started winning.

I also must point out that this whole exercise is drawing crucial attention away from the far more concrete steps that need to be taken to actually protect this country: securing ports, inspecting containers, securing public transit, etc., all things I've mentioned here before. Why is the White House so enamored of spying than actually doing anything resembling concrete action? The flubbed the invasion of Iraq, they failed miserably in post-Katrina recovery efforts, they can't even get the oil flowing in Iraq. They can't protect our cities and their denizens. But they can cut taxes for the rich, cut Medicaid... This is a party that is useless at the art of governing and administering to the needs of their constituents. They are incompetent idealogues, and it is a travesty that only in the last year has the mainstream public begun to catch on that they've been had.