NYT: Kabuki Congress & the Illegal Spying Dance

The New York Times is running a scathing editorial in its Monday edition titled Kabuki Congress which details the end runs made around the law by Republicans to protect Bush's illegal NSA spying program. The fact that congress even has to do so is a better indication of the White House's guilt and the fear that pervades the powers-that-be than any investigation may have even produced, considering that so much of what would be questioned would be stamp "classified" and categorized as "executive privilege" anyway. The Republicans, in trying to cover up the crime, may indeed have just exposed how criminal it was.

Imagine being stopped for speeding and having the local legislature raise the limit so you won't have to pay the fine. It sounds absurd, but it's just what is happening to the 28-year-old law that prohibits the president from spying on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge.

It's a familiar pattern. President Bush ignores the Constitution and the laws of the land, and the cowardly, rigidly partisan majority in Congress helps him out by rewriting the laws he's broken.

Well, this is quite a change of pace from the so-called paper of record which held up Judith Miller as their patron saint in the maniacal rush to the Iraq war. Perhaps the editors really are tired of being played by the neocons and their puppets in Washington. Then again, they have nothing to lose now that Bush's popularity is at its lowest level ever and the American public has spoken clearly in poll after poll that they will no longer cosign his agenda. The Republican congress, however, refuses to wake up and smell the fact that they may lose seats in this year's election by continuing to be the clean-up crew for this hugely distrusted president.

Congress learned that American troops were abusing, torturing and killing prisoners, and that the administration was illegally detaining hundreds of people at camps around the world. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, huffed and puffed about the abuse, but did nothing. And when the courts said the detention camps do fall under the laws of the land, compliant lawmakers simply changed them.

Now the response of Congress to Mr. Bush's domestic wiretapping scheme is following the same pattern, only worse.

The editorial continues by outlining the moves made by the power players to cover up Bush's crimes, referring to the whole scenario as a "shell game" and concluding:

Putting on face paint and pretending that illusion is reality is fine for Kabuki theater. Congress should have higher standards.

Congress should, but it doesn't and it's long past the time for Americans to stand up and demand more than it's been given by this corrupt bunch of so-called lawmakers. A far more apt description of what's been going on in Washington under this administration is that it's comparable to a crime family in which the hitmen do their dirty deeds and their patsies bury the bodies under threat of execution themselves. It's much more than just a "dance". It's a well-coordinated crime wave.