The Bush Administration Continues Looking Like that of Richard Nixon

And the Republican Party is acting more like an organized crime mob than a party for the people.

Well, the FISA Bill that will allow the US government to continue wiretapping Americans has passed and the telecom companies are also off the hook for wiretapping without a valid FISA warrant. It is appearing that George W. Bush got what he wanted and the average American loses another piece of the Constitution's 4th Amendment.
Yes, I agree that the compromise bill does give some reassurances that require more safe-guards from inappropriate wiretapping, but I am also reminded of the famous quotation from our forefather, Benjamin Franklin; "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

And, not only did the Senate pass the compromise FISA Bill, they also shot down the amendments that would have made it stronger for all American's right to privacy. Unfortunately, the desperate Republicans were joined by some weak Democrats in not wanting to be accused of being "soft on terror" when they traveled back to their home states during the congressional Summer break.

With the approval of this FISA Bill (without the amendments), what has finally happened is that, what is now considered "legal" is exactly what caused Richard Nixon to have to resign as the 37th President of the United States.

Thirty-five years ago, President Richard Nixon, when he approved his administration's wiretapping of the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate in Washington DC, claimed constitutional authority to wiretap Americans' phone calls to protect America's national security without asking a federal judge. This is the same assertion that President Bush is making today in the name of fighting terrorism. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Nixon, saying the Constitution granted the powers he was claiming to federal judges, not presidents.

Presidents had previously approved wiretaps without court orders since the 1940s, but the legality of the practice was thrown into doubt after the Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that electronic eavesdropping was a "search", and thus covered by the prohibition on unreasonable searches in the Constitution's 4th Amendment. The case Nixon chose as a test of presidential authority arose during a turbulent period in America in circumstances that to President Nixon must have seemed to favor the government. He was wrong back then, but with this latest approval of the FISA Bill, Bush can now continue getting away with the same wiretapping that had caused Richard Nixon to have to resign or to be impeached.

But even with this loss on the FISA Bill, what I am even more disturbed about is how the Republicans, the Bush Administration and now the McCain supporters continue to make all the noise saying that the reason for this "carte blanc" wiretapping of Americans is because of the disasters of 9/11. If one listens to the President and his supporters, there was never a need to have this blanket approval to wiretap all American's if there had not been the 9/11, al Qaeda attack. To those that continue to make that statement, (which by-the-way, includes most of the right-wing talk shows), if this is the reason for wiretapping Americans, why did George W. Bush start his illegal wiretapping program shortly after he took office in February of 2001?

Bush began his illegal wiretapping seven months before the 9/11 attack...? At the time, no one in the Bush Administration had done anything or hardly even mentioned Osama bin Laden or his al Qaeda organization. In fact, it has been stated by some White House aides from Bush's first term that because Bill Clinton's CIA and National Security Advisors had been working on Middle-East terror issues, Bush came into office telling his staff to "put anything that Bill Clinton had as a high priority on the bottom of the pile".

It is now well known that Qwest Communications was the only American telecom company that refused to start a wiretapping program without a valid FISA search warrant. Startling statements from former Qwest CEO, Joseph Nacchio's defense documents state that the National Security Agency (NSA) began building a massive call records database seven months before 9/11. And this is not the only statement by a telecom company that the controversial program predated the attacks of 9/11.

In May 2006, a lawsuit was filed against Verizon Telecom for allegedly turning over call records to the NSA. In the lawsuit, it also states that AT&T began building a spying facility for the NSA just days after President Bush was inaugurated. This lawsuit is just one of 50 that have been consolidated and moved to a San Francisco Federal District Court, where the suits sit in limbo waiting for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether the suits can proceed without endangering national security.

In addition, according to additional court documents, the former Qwest CEO clearly wanted to argue in court that the NSA had retaliated against his company. Mr. Nacchio has said that this retaliation began almost immediately after he turned down the NSA wiretapping request on February 27, 2001, which he had confirmed was an illegal request. Nacchio's attorney issued a statement in 2006, saying that Nacchio had also turned down the NSA's repeated requests for his customer's call records.

So why did Bush start this wiretapping long before the 9/11 attack? There does seems to be a real concern by some individuals that it is going back to how it was with the Republicans and Richard Nixon in the 1970's. The focus then however, was only to spy on the other political party, not for dealing with "possible terrorist threats".

As another example to support this possible conspiracy theory, you may not be aware of something that happened in 2004 under the previous Republican Congress and the Bush Administration's leadership.

In March of 2004, it was reported in the New York Times that a then recent, internal Senate report had stated that for 18 months, at least two Republican Senate staff aides engaged in unauthorized, spying by illegally reading and printing Democratic strategy memorandums on a Senate computer system that was accessed through the Senate's internal phone system. This information was stated in a report released by the then Republican Senate sergeant-at-arms.

The 65-page Senate report concluded that the two Republican staff aides, both of whom have since departed, improperly read, downloaded and printed as many as 4,670 files concerning the Democrats' tactics in opposing many of President Bush's judicial nominees. (Some of the downloads were determined to have been taken directly from Senator Ted Kennedy's Senate office computer.) The official report was the result of an investigation undertaken at the request of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which suggested that many other Republican staff aides may have been involved in trafficking in the stolen documents.

"I am mortified that this improper, unethical and simply unacceptable breach of confidential files occurred," Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he also told reporters. "There is no excuse that can justify these improper actions."

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the committee's ranking Democrat, said, "This report indisputably shows that this secret surveillance was calculated, systematic and sweeping in its scope."

Conspiracy or not, it's interesting how all this seems to come together. It also shows why today, after this FISA Bill approval, all Americans should now be just as leery of the government and this administration as we are of possible foreign terrorists. (What happened to the days when all we Americans had to watch out for was some extra "pork spending" by our US Congress?)

And yes, today the US government continues to look more like something that should be run by Al Capone instead of duly elected representatives of the people.

It's all now very sad, disappointing and worst of all, it's potentially very threatening to all American's future liberty and freedom.