Bush Vigorously Defends Domestic Spying

Bush Vigorously Defends Domestic Spying

This is so big it's taken a few days to sink in.

I've long said George W. Bush combines the worst of Reagan and the worst of Nixon. We've seen Reagan's oversimplification from day one; now we have Nixonian paranoia, a Watergate bugging writ large. We are all Daniel Ellsberg and our phone calls and surfing are our shrink.

Without even asking, one instinctively knows that every prominent Democrat, every war critic, has a bulging file. I'm confident, after posts like this and this and this, that my humble blog is cached somewhere at the Department of Homeland Security (sic). ("Homeland Security" sounds so Third Reich, although Orwellian may be more appropriate.)

I once said I would rather see another plane hit a building than live this way. I meant it then and I mean it now. (So add that to the file.) An open society is a risk. But the benefits of our openness far outweight the costs, even a cost as great as 9/11. The "war on terror" as it is currently being fought calls into question the very nature of our democracy, of our society.

Yet Bush has the nerve to brag about it AND chide the New York Times for reporting it. I am reminded of a Hunter Thompson quote, which I cannot find at this early hour, that when Nixon looked upon an anti-war crowd, he did not see protesters, "he sees enemies."

The war, the paranoia, the American KGB, the no fly lists, it all needs to end now.

Double impeachment.

Manhattan Project for energy independence.

Get out of that whole part of the world including Israel.

Let them fight it out.

Take care of America.