Gore

Al Gore has, once again [too late, of course] unleashed the famed Gore Fury upon the Bush administration on a well-timed MLK Day speech. [yes, that's a link to the Drudge Report for the transcript. Deal with it.]

In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

...
Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on "large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States." The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection."

During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the President went out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place.

But surprisingly, the President's soothing statements turned out to be false. Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was uncovered by the press, the President not only confirmed that the story was true, but also declared that he has no intention of bringing these wholesale invasions of privacy to an end.

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

[All emphasis, of course, is mine.]

The point here is that Gore has nothing to gain [other than the reconstruction of the Democratic party's backbone] by giving this speech. He is, in fact, something of a highly-valuable witness to the events. A 2 term vice president gives a major, and majorly condemning, speech of The Administration's efforts to boundlessly expand the Executive Branch's power reach.

As the Tennessee Guerrilla Women say, the speech begins a serious public period of reflection and investigation- and Patrick Fitzgerald may be the man for the job.

But coming from such an important figurehead in American politics [arguably], why don't we hear anything about it? Peter Daou is on to something here. While CNN covers the story online with appropriately dramatic headlining, on television they seem more fixated by a tanker-truck accident.

Daou points out the severe restriction that the media continues to impose on the American public by their selective coverage. They have lost the impetus to discuss, with any sense of urgency or reliability, the long-running attempt by The Administration to crown themselves king. Partially, because the process has been so long and dull, really.

But we now find ourselves with a leadership who claims the right to detain individuals without concern for citizenship [American citizens included]; for an indefinite period of time; without any legal options or availability of legal representation; potentially torture those detainees; potentially torture them in secret; monitor all communications of American citizens, including phone taps, email correspondence, and parcels sent by post; to do the previous item without oversight or warrant; remain negligent as to any and all domestic concerns that do not directly benefit A) a voting base or B) a corporate interest or C) a crony. And this list goes on and on.

The scary thing is not whether we'd allow these things to occur [fact is, we already have], but that our presidency has simply claimed they had ultimate power.

And it's gotten to a point where a former contender for that office and a major political figurehead who had very close connections to the office for 8 years, thinks that it is such a severe undermining to the values of democracy to violate the law in this manner, that it threatens the democracy itself.

That's a pretty disturbing state we've found ourselves in.

Now, Mr. Gore... if only we could get some people to listen to you...