They Still Don't Get It

The McLiar/Vader Junta is using its token Hispanic mouthpiece Alberto Gonzales to try to spin the impeachable offense of warrantless spying on American citizens as a "turrist surveillance program." There are several nuggets in the AP story posted here. My favorites are:

• Gonzales says that a 15 day warrantless surveillance grace period written into the FISA legislation covering a congressional declaration of war is **proof** that congress has given the ruling Junta the powers which it has exercised.
• He said that the Junta's "reasonable basis standard" for warrantless spying is the same as the probable cause standard of the 4th amendment and falls well within the spirit of FISA.
• He opined that the MEDIA has been responsible for twisting the facts and making the spying seem much more widespread than it actually was/is.

I can't say that I'm surprised that the guy responsible IN PART for formulating this travesty is now the Junta's pointman in spinning it. Let's cut through the crap. First off, WAR HAS NOT BEEN DECLARED. That makes the 15 day grace period immaterial to the debate. But even if we agree that the AUMF allowed for this so-called grace period, by my quick math, it's been somewhere over 1550 days since the warranless searches began. That's about 100 times more than the "grace period allows. Second, no court has EVER had the opportunity to RULE on the "reasonableness" of the Junta's justification to unilaterally decide which US citizens aren't deserving of the Constitution's protection. Third, even if we all agree that the number of citizens targeted is as low as the several hundreds (although, I'm more inclined to believe that the number who were subjected to warrantless datamining is in the several HUNDRED THOUSAND range) ----- I have a question - how many is not many? If even somehow only ONE citizen was unfairly warrantlessly surveilled is that somehow OK? Have we so lost our way that we can say that there are specific classes of American citizens who are not entitled to the protection of the Constitution?

And finally I wonder: Would the Junta have nodded in agreement while the Clinton administration warrantlessly surveilled christian groups in the wake of OK City????