Casting The Net

Tomorrow, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [of the "torture memos" fame] will testify in front of a congressional committee that The Administration's super double secret NSA phone tapping surveillance program is legal, meaningful, precision targetted, and vital in the war on terror.

This will be the big moment in a recent publicity blitz by Administration big wigs in support of the program, though they have been suspiciously short on details. Porter Goss, head of the CIA, says that the outing of the program puts America at great risk, and demands that the investigation be into the leak- not into the program itself.

But all of these attempts to justify the program defy any reasonable understanding of what's going on. If the program were so essential, it would have documented and known positive effects in the war on terror. These cases simply do not exist.

It would be so targeted that no innocent American could be trapped in the system. These assurances do not exist.

It would be so cutting-edge and necessary that no law currently provides the the provisions for this action. This, of course, is shockingly untrue- the FISA court exists for this reason- to provide warrants retroactively in wiretapping cases of great importance.

So Gonzales is going to go in front of Congress and propose that this violation of the law is so utterly necessary, we're doomed if we don't adhere to it.

It's really madness. Totally ridiculous positioning- and yet, somehow, these guys are able to capitalize off of American ambivalence to these issues.

We'll see what happens tomorrow with this...