u235

I guess that enough time has elapsed that bits of information describing the current administration's early workings are leaking out. The latest fervor on what seemed to be a deceased issue, that of the patently illegal e-tapping of american's phones and email, has reached a new low. The news has described how administration officials tried to coerce (and that's using a nice word) the attorney general into renewing the NSA program by trying to force him to sign it while he was extremely sick. To be more descriptive, Ashcroft was in the hospital when the president himself called his wife telling her that he was sending people to his hospital room even though she had said he was too ill to have visitors.

Now that's a nice boss eh?

Regardless of the abusive tactics, Ashcroft refused to sign the document even when he was essentially too sick to move. You have to give the man credit, he clearly was made of some stern stuff. He was even able to lift his head from the pillow and tell them why he still wouldn't sign it.

When the deputy AG, who was witness to this, refused to be browbeaten into signing our president stepped in. In effect he decided that he had the authority to enable the program to continue, regardless.

Nice eh? Laws? What laws?

In in the after word to this nasty little story, the antagonists in question claim that they "saved countless lives" through their noble actions. Uh right yeah, the same way my little cousin prevents rain on a sunny day by doing their "sunny-day dance".

Like the title says: Easy to claim, hard to prove.

Oh, and one of the two goons that tried to harass an ailing man into signing a document against his will? Yeah, that's right - the poster-boy for truth and justice: Gonzales.