"To end the program now would afford our enemy dangerous and potential deadly new room for operation within our borders."

Nothing says that they have to end the program. They just need to have a PAPER TRAIL.

...which is what they want most desperately to avoid.

____________________________

If we heard mortar shells, we'd cuss more in our songs and cut down on guitar solos

About a week ago on Air America, Al Franken played a part of a speech that Mr. Bush gave in Buffalo, NY, last April.  In this speech he reassured his audience that, because "we value the Constitution", we only wiretap after obtaining court orders.

You can hear his words here.

An English transcript for those who don't understand Dubya Speak:

"Now... by the way... any time you hear the United States government talkin' about wire tap . . . it requires . . . a wire tap requires a court order.  Nothing has changed by the way.  When we're talkin' about chasin' down terrorists, we're talkin' about gettin' a court order before we do so.  It's important for our fellow citizens to understand . . . when you think Patriot Act, Constitutional guarantees are in place . . . when it comes to doin' what is necessary to protect our homeland because we value the Constitution."

nill illigitimi carborundum

Judging from all the questions Gonzales had no answer for, you'd think he only heard about these hearings Friday afternoon. Maybe he thought he was going to be questioned about manimals.

He seems free to talk about surveillance operations when it serves his claim that the scope of this spying was tightly limited to al Qaeda suspects, yet whenever a Senator asked a real question about those operations, Gonzales is unable to provide even the vaguest details. So how many American citizens are suspected of having links to al Qaeda? Jose Padilla and who else? FISA already allows warrantless surveillance on non-citizens. The administration is admitting it acted outside of FISA, but simultaneously saying the NSA is only pursuing al Qaeda links. That makes little sense except as an attempt to confuse and obscure the real issue here, which is the executive branch exempting itself from Constitutional checks and balances.

Kudos to Russ Feingold for getting straight to the point with his questions. Diane Fienstein asked one of the most significant questions during the time I watched, but belabored the point so badly that by the time she shut up, Gonzales was able to address one of her tangents and dodge the real question completely. 

For those who might not have seen it, for the first ten minutes or so this morning, Leahy and Specter argued back and forth about Gonzales being sworn in. Specter finally put it to a vote with his party cohorts siding with him. He voted by proxy for the two who were absent. Feingold stuck it to him, demanding to see the written proxies. The look on the chairman's face was priceless.

XM is good. I just got it with a free RoadyXT through a promotion Air America had. Streaming audio is available at their website. Randi Rhodes is probably my favorite. Mike Malloy is good, but the problem with him is that he is too wishy-washy, ambiguous, and goes too easy on the Bush administration.

Speaking of Limbaugh, it is astonishing how he blatantly omits key parts of quotes made by opposition figures, as does Hannity. And, of course, they both often just make stuff up. Their fans are incredibly gullible or in extreme denial. Hannity, 36 minutes into his radio program Friday described in excruciating detail to his listeners the Rumsfeld bandaged-patient cartoon--all but one thing. That was the sign at the foot of the bed that read "Army". He made it out to represent the patient as a multiple-amputee soldier who was being used to criticize Rumsfeld. His omission was central to interpretation of the cartoon's message.