[Dialogue] Big Brother Bush

Thu Dec 29 14:55:23 EST 2005

Colleagues, more from Molly. Peace, Harry 
  _____  

AlterNet

Big Brother Bush

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet
Posted on December 29, 2005, Printed on December 29, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/30175/

The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Thirty-five years ago,
Richard Milhous Nixon, who was crazy as a bullbat, and J. Edgar Hoover, who
wore women's underwear, decided some Americans had unacceptable political
opinions. So they set our government to spying on its own citizens,
basically those who were deemed insufficiently like Crazy Richard Milhous.

For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon
was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his
political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain Richard
III grandeur to Nixon's collapse because he was also a man of notable
talents. There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this president,
the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of our
country.

The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because
he is the president, and he considers that sufficient justification for
whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo, who tell him that
whatever he wants to do is legal.

The creepy part is the overlap. Damned if they aren't still here, after all
these years, the old Nixon hands -- Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the
whole gang whose yearning for authoritarian government rose like a stink
over the Nixon years. Imperial executive. Bring back those special White
House guard uniforms. Cheney, like some malignancy that cannot be killed
off, back at the same old stand, pushing the same old crap. Of course, they
tell us we have to be spied on for our own safety, so they can catch the
terrorists who threaten us all. Thirty-five years ago, they nabbed a film
star named Jean Seberg and a bunch of people running a free breakfast
program for poor kids in Chicago. This time, they're onto the Quakers. We
are not safer.

We would be safer, as the 9-11 commission has so recently reminded us, if
some obvious and necessary precautions were taken at both nuclear and
chemical plants -- but that is not happening because those industries
contribute to Republican candidates. Republicans do not ask their
contributors to spend a lot of money on obvious and necessary steps to
protect public safety. They wiretap, instead. You will be unsurprised to
learn that, first, they lied. They didn't do it. Well, OK, they did it, but
not very much at all. Well, OK, more than that. A lot more than that. OK,
millions of private e-mail and telephone calls every hour, and all medical
and financial records. 

You may recall in 2002 it was revealed that the Pentagon had started a giant
data-mining program called Total Information Awareness (TIA), intended to
search through vast databases "to increase information coverage by an order
of magnitude."

>From credit cards to vet reports, Big Brother would be watching us. This
dandy program was under the control of Adm. John Poindexter, convicted of
five felonies during Iran-Contra, all overturned on a technicality. This
administration really knows where to go for good help -- it ought to bring
back Brownie.

Everybody decided that TIA was a terrible idea, and the program was
theoretically shut down. As often happens with this administration, it
turned out they just changed the name and made the program less visible.
Data-mining was a popular buzzword at the time, and the administration was
obviously hot to have it. Bush established a secret program under which the
National Security Agency could bypass the FISA (Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act) court and begin eavesdropping on Americans without
warrants.

As many have patiently pointed out, the entire program was unnecessary,
since the FISA court is both prompt and accommodating. There is virtually no
possible scenario that would make it difficult or impossible to get a FISA
warrant -- it has granted 19,000 warrants and rejected only a handful.

I don't like to play scary games where we all stay awake late at night,
telling each other scary stories -- but there's a reason we have never given
our government this kind of power. As the late Sen. Frank Church said, "That
capability could at any time be turned around on the American people, and no
American would have any privacy left, such is the capacity to monitor
everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There
would be no place to hide." 

And if a dictator took over, the NSA "could enable it to impose total
tyranny." Then we always get that dreadful goody-two-shoes response, "Well,
if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about,
do you?"

Folks, we KNOW this program is being and will be misused. We know it from
the past record and current reporting. The program has already targeted
vegans and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- and, boy, if those
aren't outposts of al-Qaida, what is? Could this be more pathetic?

This could scarcely be clearer. Either the president of the United States is
going to have to understand and admit he has done something very wrong, or
he will have to be impeached. The first time this happened, the
institutional response was magnificent. The courts, the press, the Congress
all functioned superbly. Anyone think we're up to that again? Then whom do
we blame when we lose the republic? 

Molly Ivins writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings. 

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