Bush to Americans: You Have to Give Up Liberty To "Spread" It.

Four years ago, columnist Molly Ivins wrote a column entitled "Destroying Freedoms in Order to Save Them." That was before George Bush had completed his rough-shod run over every other branch of government. It was before he neglected warnings, left us vulnerable to terrorists, and then had the temerity to use his very neglect (ie, that the event happened on his watch, despite numerous warnings) as justification for unprecedented powers. And if he wasn't granted the powers he sought, he took them anyway. Big Brother rides again, and surprise, surprise, it's at the hands of a supposed small-government, right-wing executive.

What Americans have long suspected bubbled to the surface this week. In 2002 George W. Bush signed a secret law, to override US Law and the Constitution in order to spy on law-abiding American citizens. To lend cover to Bush, the Times sat on the information for over a year. Here's it's belated story.

Meanwhile, Bush keeps right on being Bush, and everything that connotes. He'll keep on keeping on, he says, spying on Americans, upending the Constitution, whipping up fear so we all feel the "terror." Then he'll use that fear to justify violating civil liberties. He'll continue to deceive Americans (as in the continued linkages laced through several speeches over the past two weeks. More on that in a future post). He'll continue to abuse power. He'll continue smashing the Constitutional separation of powers. Within just a few days, two judges, from two different federal courts, had to jerk him up short. It's long past time Congress stood up to him. The mild-mannered five-week extension doesn't cut it. What is Congress waiting for? http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Bush.html