he's gone too far

Herr Bush is being attacked by all sides over this NSA spying thing, and he deserves it as much now as ever.

Much of his (and his administration) defense is that this particular program is overseen by lawyers in many different agencies, without acknoweldgement that almost all of these are in the executive branch (with a little Congressional oversight). There is, however, no judicial oversight at all...something which wouldn't have been that hard for him to get. After all, it is already legal for the NSA to record conversations and obtain a judicial warrant after the fact if they need to. Firthermore, given the circumstances and political climate in this country, Bush could have asked for a reworking of applicable law and more than liely received it from Congress. As it is, however, this whole thing is illegal.

George Will, a conservative whose opinion I usually really respect, likens the thing to an "unforced error" in tennis -- that is, an error that could have easily been avoided but for one's own mistake. As it is, Bush has so overstepped his constitutional and statutory bounds that it's scary -- what an LA Times editorial calls "Bigger Brother" and prompted Sen. Feingold to dub the president "King George".

It should not be a suprise to any of us, however, as it is a continuation of the same sort of cavalier disrespect for legal processes that the president has shown throughout both of his terms of office (the illegal war in Iraq? the whole torture thing?). This, however, is an escalation of that megalomania...this is beyond flirting with the intracacies of legal terminology and into the realm of side-stepping the judiciary when playing with the Constitution -- the very document that is the president's primary duty to protect.

Is this spying thing a horrible thing? Well, I don't like it, but it probably would have been okayed by the Republican Congress (and the judiciary may very well have gone along with it). What is horrible (and in my opinion cause for impeachment of the president and all members of Congress who knew and did nothing) is that the president made a decision that affected the very freedoms of Americans on his own -- as a king or despot might -- instead of the mechanisms that were put in place in the Constitution. That, my friends, is the unforgivable political sin.