Shocking abuse of power

This wiretap scandal is starting to heat up. I have to say it's sad though that I wasn't surprised to hear that Bush was violating the civil rights of Americans without consulting a court. It's par for the course.

Anyhow, it looks like they're claiming that Congress told them they could though. Read below:

Such wiretaps are legal, Gonzales told CNN, because the president received the authority when Congress passed a measure in the days after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, authorizing him to 'use all necessary and appropriate force' to fight terrorism.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't pass the laugh test. "All necessary and appropriate force" doesn't mean "wiretap American citizens without consulting a court". The amazing thing is that there's ALREADY a secret court for getting approval on these kinds of things. Bush doesn't have to compromise security to get court approval for a wiretap.

The fact that he didn't even consult his own secret court tells me that they were doing things that even that court wouldn't allow. The funny thing is that here I was unhappy about a secret court that doesn't answer to many folks, and Bush wasn't even bothering with that.

It's amazing that after eight years of Clinton all that can be said bad about him is that he fooled around with an intern and lied about it. After only five years of Bush we've had torture, political dirty tricks, false imprisonment, lies, and now severe violations of our civil rights. If you coun't DeLay (conspiracy, money laundering), Frist (insider trading), and Cunningham (taking bribes) - I'd argue that we haven't seen misuse of power like this since the Nixon years.

Anyhow, the CNN.com article is linked below. Enjoy.

Gonzales: Post-9/11 act allowed secret wiretaps