Welcome to the Memory Hole!
Something seems to be missing today from the Google News front page. There are lots of stories — let’s see, dead miners, dead teenager in Australia, dead former rock star in Virginia, dead people in a landslide. There’s political stuff — Abramoff mess, Patriot Act renewal. But something’s missing…. wait, I know what it is! Didn’t the President recently wipe his ass with the Constitution and dare anybody to do anything about it? Didn’t he recently say something like “L’etat, c’est moi”? Except not in French, ’cause the French hate America? Why isn’t that on the Google News front page?
Wait a minute, maybe it’s on the Google U.S. News page. Let’s see…. scroll down…. keep scrolling…. Below the two-headed snake. Below Tropical Storm Catherine Zeta-Jones. Below the big news that it’s snowing in Connecticut. Oh, here it is! But hang on — it’s a story about the spying… but…but… nothing about the President! Nothing about the ass-wiping with the Constitution! In fact, the story seems to be that the naughty National Security Agency started the spying all by themselves!!!
The National Security Agency acted on its own authority, without a formal directive from President Bush, to expand its domestic surveillance operations in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to declassified documents released Tuesday.
Naughty, naughty NSA! Doing things behind the President’s back!
Fortunately, the President secretly made everything okay in 2002 by secretly signing a secret executive order authorizing the secret spying:
In 2002, President Bush signed an executive order specifically authorizing the security agency to eavesdrop without warrants on the international communications of Americans inside the United States who the agency believed were connected to Al Qaeda.
Like vegans, and Quakers, and feminists. Damn those vegan Quaker feminists!
Admiral Inman, former head of the NSA, has the last word in the Times article:
Admiral Inman called the uproar over the warrantless eavesdropping “sad, if not a tragedy, for the agency.” Though the N.S.A. program operated under an executive order from President Bush, he said, many Americans believed the agency was “somehow acting illegally to spy on Americans.”
See? That whole thing was just a warrantless uproar! Warrantless in EVERY WAY! Just because the President and the NSA broke the law doesn’t mean that they were “somehow acting illegally.” And just because they were spying on Americans doesn’t mean that they were somehow “spying on Americans.”
Thank you, Memory Hole!
