NSA Secret Phone Database

The president's latest challenge to constitutional limits on his power is the NSA's secret database of phone calls made by millions of Americans. As usual, the president's defense of this policy boils down to, "Trust me. I would never abuse this kind of power." Administration defenders will say that all they are trying to do is identify terrorists. But here's the basic problem with so much of this guy does: there is no accountability in place to ensure that that is true. This is a common thread to all of Bush's abuses of power.

He claims he can detain citizens for as long as he likes, without having to charge them with anything, simply on suspicion of terrorist activity. What's wrong with that? Well, how about the fact that the administration is never made to justify or defend that suspicion. It's like McCarthy's old trick of holding up sealed envelopes, claiming that the contents proved so and so was a Communist without ever having to actually open the document and show the evidence. That's the point of having to officially charge someone with a crime: the government has to present the evidence that justifies their suspicions. The president has decided he just doesn't have to do that.

The president will claim that the illegal eavesdropping was only targeted at suspected terrorists. But, yet again, he never had to actually justify that suspicion. As long as someone said they thought maybe the person might be a terrorist, spy away without limits. Senator Feingold has said that he supports spying on terrorists, as long as it's done legally. Some administration defenders say this is a contradiction. But it's very simple. The law requires the administration to present its case before a court and to get permission. It's not that the government can't spy on suspects, it just has to justify that suspicion before doing it. That's the point! The president just doesn't feel he has to justify himself to anyone, so there's no need to go to a court like the law demands.

Sen. Koyl gives the standard defense of these kinds of abuses: "We are in a war, and we have got to collect intelligence on the enemy." War justifies everything, I guess. This president has the convenience of waging a war against an undefined enemy, who is whoever the president decides it is at the time, with no defined goal or means of determining when this war is over. War without end. That's the recipe for 1984. Create a perpetual state of war, and then use that war to distort and pervert whatever laws are deemed necessary. No, I'm not on the lunatic fringe that says we're there now. But events are in motion, and what's to stop some future president from taking things another step forward?

For those who can't understand this, answer this. What would Nixon, in all his paranoia, have done if he had had the de facto authority to imprison anyone he wanted for as long as he wanted, so long as he invoked the magic word "terrorist"? That's the kind of power this president claims to have.

Why is it the conservatives, who supposedly have such a distrust of government that they want to limit its power as much as possible, who have such blind trust in both the man currently holding the office and the office itself? Why is it they cannot see the danger of giving such unchecked, unaccountable power to the presidency?