1 Boring Old Man

In a very fine editorial, the New York Times blasts President Bush for his "unwarranted" N.S.A. domestic surveillance program. They list the various arguments the Administration has mounted –

• Sept. 11 could have been prevented
• Only bad guys are spied on
• The spying is legal
• Just trust us
• The rules needed to be changed
• War changes everything
• Other presidents did it

– and in a short paragraph each, do a pretty good job of discounting each one of them. While I’m not complaining, the thing they didn’t do is ask "Why?" Why was it important to do the surveillance without going through the F.I.S.A. courts?

I can’t think of a benign reason. Even the claim that it’s too much trouble, that it slows things down, is not benign. The Separation of Powers has never been convenient. It results in a slowness and a bureaucratization that all of us complain about – but it’s worth it. It keeps us safe from ourselves. It keeps us safe from small people who deal with their own sense of personal inadequacy by a will to power [eg Dick Nixon, George Bush, Karl Rove]. To discount it shows a dangerous level of disrespect for our Constitution and smacks of Dictatorship. Bad Attitude! No Thanks!

Another explanation is to get this new insanity, the Untiary Executive, on the books. In our post Wateregate world, there is more oversight than there used to be, and the neoconservatives don’t like that. Their flirting with Fascism is much deeper than we knew, though they never tried to hide it. We just didn’t read their boring books. It’s a bit like those old books by Ayn Rand, rule by the heroic special people who know what’s good for us. And the F.I.S.A. court is just standing in the way of their glorious and benevolent utopia of power.

But George Bush, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney are not Randian heros like Howard Rourk, Dagney Taggart, or John Galt. They are wimpy, paranoid draft dodgers. One doubts  lofty motives. More likely, they’re listening in on people that they shouldn’t be listening in on for their own reasons – misusing the government’s technology for political reasons. They say they’re not doing that.

Prove it! I for one, don’t believe them. But the way to prove it is to turn over every record to the F.I.S.A. court. Why not?…