You're All Under Investigation

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime.

-- USA Today,
NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls,
May 11, 2006

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President Bush today denied that the government is "mining or trolling through the personal lives of innocent Americans".

-- New York Times,
Bush Says U.S. Spying Is Not Widespread,
May 11, 2006

What can one say about this? The USA Today article states clearly that only the "patterns" of phone calls are monitored and not the actual content, which sounds reasonable on the surface. But given that this is the Bush White House we're talking about, who really knows what is going on below the surface. Even so, pattern monitoring requires judicial certification and it should be certain at this point the White House sure as hell didn't get that because certification requires that the monitoring be relevant to an "ongoing investigation." Given administration arguments already, perhaps they did secure court approval. This is highly unlikely, but they could have easily argued that the ongoing investigation is whatever George Bush says it is and right now they intend to investigate the entire damned country, rife as it is with evil-doers. All of American is currently under investigation in the War on Terra. So there.

Will the Dems ever have the balls to turn the tide and place White House enablers under similar scrutiny? While Karl Rove's latest fear strategy might hope that would be true, don't count on it. Besides, Rove's imagined "warnings" of Democratic investigations are only just that. He sure as hell hopes the Dems don't have the wherewithal to do any such thing either. And I expect the Dems will be only too happy to oblige Karl's hope.