From "It Was Legal" To "I Am Lazy": The George Bush Domestic Spy Story

[Marleyb]

Another day, yet another new and wholly different explanation from the Bush administration about its illegal domestic spying operation.

In just the last 5 days, we’ve seen 3 separate explanations rolled out from the White House. First they claimed it was legal all along, then when that didn’t fly, they said they had to do it because of a need for speed.

Now that that has been debunked, they are actually claiming they were just too lazy to do "the paperwork." On top of this, they also first told us that the surveillance was only targeted at international calls - but now today, we learn that isn’t true either, and that Americans are under surveillance on purely domestic calls....

When their "it was legal all along" argument didn’t hold water, President Bush called a press conference claiming that he needed to break the law because the operations he was ordering "require quick action."

But then that was debunked too, as observers noted that the special FISA court Bush was legally required to get a warrant from actually allowed the White House to conduct surveillance, and get a warrant retroactively, thus not slowing down the process....

Now, with two swings and misses, the White House is offering up perhaps the most pathetic rationale possible: we were lazy, and we just didn’t feel like upholding the law. The administration is trotting out Michael Hayden, who was NSA director when the surveillance began and is now Bush’s deputy director of national intelligence. The Washington Post reports that Hayden told reporters that "getting retroactive court approval is inefficient because it ’involves marshaling arguments’ and ’looping paperwork around.’"

So now we really see what it’s come to. The law is just a nuisance to these people. They don’t feel like "marshaling arguments" or doing the "paperwork" that the law requires - the law, mind you, that was written to protect people’s civil liberties...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/from-it-was-legal-to-i_b_12692.html

[Eric J in MN]

1. David Sirota comes through with a good article (nt)

nt

[CatWoman]

2. I'm waiting for the ever popular, and predictable

"the dog ate my homework" excuse :D

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

3. Before witnessing this blatant display of arrogance and hubris

regarding the 4th Amendment and the growing totalitarian mindset of ChimpCo,
I didn't really consider myself in the MIHOP camp with regard to 9/11. Now, I'm frankly open to considering it a possibility. This latest Bush scandal has led me to consider that they could be capable of virtually anything.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Well.... I was too lazy to let the weapons inspectors finish the

damn fine job they were doing....