Torture Girl Channels her Mid-Winter Crazies into Incoherent Blog Postings, part gazillion.

Did I mention that I go crazy in the wintertime? It's a thing for me. One year I found God, around January, I think. God wanted me to clean the kitchen. I was convinced it was God because I really, really hate to clean the kitchen, and I couldn't imagine anything else that would get me to do it as much as I did actually clean the kitchen that January. One year I spent a week sitting on the couch in the common room of my dorm with a blanket over my head, crying. My roommate's boyfriend had invaded our bedroom, which is why I was on the couch and not on the bed. If I remember correctly, we found the couch on the street and wrangled it back to the dorm balanced on a broken shopping cart. Nothing, however, can top my Best Christmas Ever, My Big Fat Nervous Breakdown, which first made its appearance three years and two days ago. I was pregnant and catatonic, and boy oh boy was that fun.

This year I've actually been doing pretty well, considering. God has stayed well away. Crying under blankets has been minimal. Still, I am filled with a nervous, anxious energy that, if I sit still and allow myself to feel it, soon settles down and resolves into a deep well of despair.

"Do not give in to despair," says Mr. Bush, speaking, of course, of his endless war. We will win this war, he says, when I say we have won it. In fact, we have already won it, except that it goes on, to greater and greater victory each day. Our victory is glorious and world-changing. Our struggle is necessary. God has spoken to me, and wants me to carry his banner of victory and freedom across the world. Fighting there so we don't fight at home. Except that we need to fight at home too. Especially the Democrats and the other traitors. He is grand and incoherent, that man. He is a little man, full of big visions. He is certain of himself and of his direct line to God, and of the power vested him.

I do wish God was merely telling him to clean the kitchen. The White House kitchen is pretty big, I'm sure, and I'll bet that could keep him occupied for the next three years.

Anyway, I doubt anyone besides our dear friend RJ reads this blog anymore (who would, when we are such poor posters? We break every blogger rule, the most important of which is "post regularly", even if what you post is incoherent drek beamed directly from a kitchen-cleanliness-obsessed God.) I used to have readers, who used to admit to me that sometimes I informed them of important events in the world about which they would otherwise have been unaware. Or that sometimes I berated them into action about some important torture-related horror. Ah, those were the days. In my December-addled brain, I imagine I can recapture them with regular doses of ramblings. Someone I know had a content challenge on her blog, once: she had to post every day. Maybe I too will adopt a content challenge. Maybe Max will commandeer my computer before I can make a further ass of myself, and I will not end up adopting a content challenge.

Okay, now here's the part where I attempt to be coherent and inform my readers of very important developments in the world today:

See, the whole spying by the NSA thing is HUGE. For those of you who may be unaware: The New York Times recently published a story about a classified program in which the NSA is allowed to spy on Americans without EVER obtaining a warrant. This program was authorized by President Bush in a secret Executive order in 2002, and it is estimated that perhaps several thousand Americans have been spied on since its inception. Some important points about this revelation:

1) Since the 70s, when intelligence agency practices were reformed after Nixon spied on opponents for partisan political purposes, it has been absolutely illegal for our intelligence agencies to spy on Americans. Congress passed laws about it. The laws are perfectly clear. They are not vague amendments that might be read one way or another, depending on whether you belong to the Federalist Society. They are clear laws passed to correct a clear and recent abuse of power.

2) There are procedures in place to allow the relevant agencies to obtain warrants for national security usage. The procedures protect the classified nature of the work, and they allow agencies to proceed with as much haste as they need to, as long as they file to obtain warrants within 72 hours of the start of the surveillance. The point of these procedures is to force the government to allow independent review of who they are spying on, and why. The NSA's warrantless searches are never reviewed. No one knows who they are spying on, or why. They might have intercepted John Kerry's personal phone calls with his kids, for all we know. They're the NSA, they can do that.

3) President Bush claims that his spying program is not illegal. He won't tell us precisely why he thinks it's not illegal even though it's, well, illegal. But a good guess is that his favorite fascist lawyer, John "Torture" Yoo, said the President can do whatever his little heart pleases, for as long as we are at war. So it's not illegal, since he's doing it. "L'État, c'est moi." See, there were a whole bunch of revolutions and stuff that we had to go through to show leaders that we didn't really buy that notion of power. We here in America suppose that the State is, well, Us. Mr. Bush seems to think that the fact that he was "elected" means that we've given up all our power to him, and so he no longer has to answer to us. Which is why I vote for impeachment. We have to show him, and his ilk, that they do, still, in fact have to answer to us. Casting a vote once every four years is not our sole responsibility as the State, and the fact that we do so does not rob us of our power to act as the State the rest of the time.

4) A side, but disturbing note is that The New York Times sat on the story for "about a year" before publishing, at the request of the Bush Administration. A bit cagey about how long "about a year" is. About a year and a month?

Okay, here's where I link to what other people are saying, while providing not much context. Back to incoherent-land!!!:

Digby writes, on permanent war:

Keep in mind that we are not talking about the Big Boogeyman, terrorism, here. We are talking about Iraq, a country in the middle east that we invaded and are occupying. We could just as easily be the Romans or the Turks or the British. There's nothing "different" about it. But even in Iraq we don't know what constitutes victory or defeat. Therefore, we could, theoretically, always be at war.

This is the most troubling aspect of the Yoo Doctrine. It is offensive enough that he contends that the president has completely unfettered powers during wartime. But the fact that he also believes that the president can "make war" at his discretion, define war in any way he chooses, consider "victory" to be any one or all of a thousand of unknown conditions that we may or may not be able to discern, is the truly unique factor here. And the fact that the administration is applying this vague definition of war and victory even to a conventional war like Iraq is very dangerous. It gives imperial powers forever to any president who simply says we are "at war."

A great editorial from the PIttsburgh Post-Gazette:

It appears that the phone and e-mail messages of thousands of Americans and foreigners resident in America have been or are being monitored and recorded by the NSA. Such action is not supposed to be taken without an application to and an order approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Mr. Bush issued an executive order in 2002, months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack, removing -- secretly -- that legal safeguard of Americans' privacy and civil rights.

[...]

The White House needs to tell the Pentagon promptly to destroy the records of protesters as required, within three months. It also needs promptly to tell the NSA to return to following the rules, to get the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before monitoring Americans' communications. The idea that all of this is being done to us in the name of national security doesn't wash; that is the language of a police state. Those are the unacceptable actions of a police state.[my emphasis]

More Creepies...:

A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."

Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.

I have a copy of The Little Red Book. Hmmm. I have also spent significant time abroad. And written "anti-government" things on my website. I know foreigners. Lots of 'em. My husband speaks French! Our kid thinks The Third Man is a classic children's movie. We don't have cable TV. How long before we receive a visit from the Department of Homeland Security? Is the NSA monitoring our phone calls with our friends in Spain? There's nothing like government spying run amok to bring out the paranoid freak in us all!

Finally, Hilzoy, guest-blogging on Political Animal:

This is against the law. I have put references to the relevant statute below the fold; the brief version is: the law forbids warrantless surveillance of US citizens, and it provides procedures to be followed in emergencies that do not leave enough time for federal agents to get a warrant. If the NY Times report is correct, the government did not follow these procedures. It therefore acted illegally.

Bush's order is arguably unconstitutional as well: it seems to violate the fourth amendment, and it certainly violates the requirement (Article II, sec. 3) that the President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."

I am normally extremely wary of talking about impeachment. I think that impeachment is a trauma for the country, and that it should only be considered in extreme cases. Moreover, I think that the fact that Clinton was impeached raises the bar as far as impeaching Bush: two traumas in a row is really not good for the country, and even though my reluctance to go through a second impeachment benefits the very Republicans who needlessly inflicted the first on us, I don't care. It's bad for the country, and that matters most.

But I have a high bar, not a nonexistent one. And for a President to order violations of the law meets my criteria for impeachment. This is exactly what got Nixon in trouble: he ordered his subordinates to obstruct justice. To the extent that the two cases differ, the differences make what Bush did worse: after all, it's not as though warrants are hard to get, or the law makes no provision for emergencies. Bush could have followed the law had he wanted to. He chose to set it aside.

And this is something that no American should tolerate. We claim to have a government of laws, not of men. That claim means nothing if we are not prepared to act when a President (or anyone else) places himself above the law. If the New York Times report is true, then Bush should be impeached.

Okay, Biscuit Baby is just about done watching his Wallace and Grommit DVD, so I gotta quit posting and find some pipe cleaners and rubber bands to entertain him.