Zalm has a good post on George W. Bush's claim that he has the legal right and even the responsibility to spy on American citizens without a warrant. Newsweek's Jonathan Alter also takes on the President's claim that existing measures aren't strong enough, and talks about how the President pulled in the managing editors from the New York Times to try and stop them from running this story. Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum suspect that the President is justifying some invasive new technologies like data mining that would make it difficult to get individual warrants.
But as Zalm suggests, if so, then we need to talk about it. It always amazes me when conservatives (the same ones who thought that Clinton was eroding their civil liberties, btw) seem to suggest that we have to do whatever it takes to defeat terrorism. That list seems to include undermining our very moral and civic values. Torture; invasion of privacy; a dictatorial leadership that relies on fear and divisiveness. All things that we grew up expecting from dictatorships and communist states.
No doubt we live in difficult times. Not sure they are any more difficult than any other time, but that is for another discussion. But do we really want to give up our freedom and moral high ground here? Why are the flag wavers the ones most willing to do that? And does anyone really think that had this happened under Clinton's watch that conservatives would not have been outraged? The difference appears to be that liberals would have been outraged under Clinton too. We shall see how much we get from the right.
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