Constitution? What Constitution?

It has been forever since I have made a political post - I don't plan to get back in the habit too much. But this story, the NSA spying story, is just so awful - so pathetic. It's bad on the surface - here's Jonathan Alter discussing it, how it is plainly illegal, how "Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War." It's bad the way it was covered and revealed, the politics being played - the New York Times had this story last year? Before the election? Sweet Lord! It's depressing to watch Bush and company defend it, trying to turn the debate back on his opponents. Depressing. But it's also pathetic, because it's such a pointless act of villainy. A couple days ago, I saw Mark Jurkowitz on TV, one of those panel shows they have on WGBH. I was just flipping through - and heard him say somethign to the effect, if they put these wiretaps to a vote, they'd pass easily. That raises 2 points. The first is wonky, sure, though fundamental to what it means to be an American - civil liberties aren't supposed to be put to a vote. The constitution is largely about defining what can and can't be put to a vote - the Bill of Rights is a basically a list of things that are not subject to the will of the majority. The second point is more direct - he's right - if you put it to a vote it would pass. And more, there was a mechanism in place for the administration to put this to a vote - if Bush and company had gone after the warrants they wanted, they would have gotten them. They broke the law for no reason. It's that kind of thing that makes us wonder what the reason was - just laziness? contempt for the law, for the constitution? or an unabashed power grab, an attempt to establish precedent for ignoring the contitution? They have a history of that - shrugging off thr Geneva Convention, playign games with what is and isn't a war, what is and isn't a foreign combatant - and when the semantics fail, just doing what they want and brazening it out until someone stops them.

(Meanwhile, over at The Poorman, Sifu Tweety comes up with an actual explanation for the policy - technology! Specifically, cell phones and calling cards that can be had anonymously, thus creating great difficulties in obtaining warrants. Interesting - if that's the case, the government is using the same logic teenagers downloading movies on the internet are - the laws apply to old fashioned technology; new technology makes the old laws inappropriate and ineffective. In this case, the excuse is pretty weak, for the reasons given above - it couldn't have been that hard to get changes in the laws that would cover this situation. Of course, the solution might have been worse than the disease - it strikes me that technology that allows greater anonymity has to be fought with means that catch a lot of innocent people - random tests, or something of that sort. Though the situation reminds me a bit of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly - the police monitor everything - but they don't have enough manpower to actually pay attention to everything - all the information they gather becomes white noise. Getting caught doing something is completely random.

I think in general, it would be better not to live in a world invented by Philip K. Dick.)