The NSA spying program… have we only heard the half of it?

In testimony before the House Judiciary committee yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez suggested the possibility that the administration also considered it legal to listen in on a completely domestic call without a warrant if it felt it was related to Al Qaeda. Thus far, the administration has only admitted to warrantless wiretapping of calls where one party was outside the U.S. The Washington Post has a story on this in today’s edition:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/06/AR2006040600764.html

My money is on the likelihood that Gonzalez is just “priming the pump”, if you will. I think the administration knows this portion of the NSA program is about to become public, and they want to be “ahead of the story”. Don’t be surprised if you see this story break in the next week or so.

Meanwhile, the silence from the White House is deafening regarding yesterday’s revelation that “Scooter” Libby got authorization to leak a portion of the NIE to Judy Miller (effectively outing Valerie Plame) from President Bush himself, through V.P. Dick Cheney. I figured this would be the logical progression of this case, seeing that Libby had previously been quoted (in testimony) as saying his “superiors” (plural) had given him authorization to leak the information.

Here’s a hint to the conservatives out there… Cut your losses while you can. Get your President & V.P. to resign. If you don’t (which you won’t), and even half of what those of us on the left suspect comes to light (and it will), Republicans won’t even have control of the Capitol janitorial service for the next 50 years. And America will never trust you again.

Some would say, “well, look at Nixon – even after what he did, people still trusted the party.” Big difference here – Pres. Nixon didn’t send 2500 Americans to their death halfway around the world on false pretenses. Nixon didn’t leak classified information just to discredit someone who tried to tell the truth. And Nixon was smart enough, and not so god-damned arrogant to know when the jig was up, and he resigned for the good of his country.

“For the good of his country” is a concept that Bush, Cheney, Rove, Gonzalez, and Rumsfeld just don’t comprehend. And that is what will be their undoing. Because if you cannot be a patriot, then you have no business holding the highest offices in the land. You clowns may not be smart enough to figure that out, but I am quite sure that America is.