Bush and his "spy powers"

I linked to this article from the Columbus Free Press in an earlier thread, and JayDean suggested that this was something that should get front page attention. I certainly agree. I should point out that it was a Free Press article by Bob Fitrakis, Diebold, electronic voting, and the vast right-wing conspiracy that first made me aware of the real dangers that Diebold-style vote counting pose to the future of any sort of representative government in the United States. Occasionally I see Bob around campus at the local community college, and when I saw him a couple months ago I commented about how frustrating it is that we can't seem to get any traction on this issue. If you can't verify that your vote is counted correctly, what do *any* of the other political discussions we have matter? As he says in his most recent article: What part of the headline in the Columbus Dispatch: "Diebold vote machine can be hacked, test finds" don't people understand?

Bob Fitrakis has a new piece in the current issue of the Free press, asking Did NSA help Bush hack the vote? It connects the dots between older, presumably "unsexy" stories like the issue of "black box" voting with the newer more alarming revelations about Bush claiming "spy powers".

What do we make of the President boldly proclaiming that he has "spy powers?" Does he have X-ray vision too?

When he and his cronies crawl up into Cheney's bunker with the sign on the door "He-man Woman-haters Club. No Girls Allowed (except Condi)," do they synchronize their spy decoder rings and decide what new absurd folly to unleash on the world?

No, that excerpt was not vital to the story, but I couldn't pass on including it, because I get a kick out of the imagery. That's probably going to stay with me the way Jon Stewart's joke a few years ago about Bush running downstairs on the morning of President's Day in his footie pajamas, anxious to find out what presents he'd gotten. But while the article has plenty of snark, it addresses some pretty serious issues about questions we need to be asking. And while we know that some will dismiss the questions as "tin foil hat" stuff, I would maintain that all such questions remain on the table as legitimate speculations as long as Bush clings to his assertion that he can do whatever he feels is necessary, no questions asked.

Illegal invasion of Iraq, suspending writs of habeus corpus, secret CIA torture dungeons, or election rigging? Most people outgrow such childish games and fantasies by the time they're ten years old. And by age twelve, most understand that the President is not a king. Or a dictator. That U.S. citizens have inalienable rights.

That there are such things as search warrants. If the executive branch of government is going to conduct surveillance on the American people, they have to get a warrant from the judicial branch specifying what they're looking for and the reasons for the search.

The Bush administration's utter contempt for the U.S. Constitution and the specific information we now know about its use of the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance network should further call into question Bush's 2004 presidential "election." In a recent revelation, we have learned that the NSA shared the fruits of its illegal spying on behalf of Bush with other government agencies.

What are e-voting machines and central tabulators that pass the voting results over electronic networks from the internet to phone lines? No more than data easily spied on and tapped into. The Franklin County Board of Elections, for example, tells us that it was a "transmission error" in Gahanna Ward 1B, where 638 people cast votes and Bush, the Wonder Boy, received 4258 votes. It's not magic, nor is it an accident or an act of God. If the vote total wasn't so hugely illogical, no one would have caught it.

Bush and his cabal are notorious for collecting raw intelligence data and using it for their political gain. While many progressives accept the fact that our government manufactured an illegal war in Iraq and routinely violate human rights worldwide, many are reluctant to accept that they would spy on John Kerry and rig the election - which is very easy to do when the NSA does your bidding.

Read the rest of the article here. And then check out this excellent diary by georgia10, A problem of hope and Filibuster Bush, Impeach Alito by PaulLoeb. Yes, the Alito issue *is* related to what I've posted above, especially given Alito's views on executive powers.

Alternate link for comments