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Gore launches stemwinder over NSA program
 | .com, we need that fire-breathing pic again. |
The former vice-president Al Gore launched a withering attack on the White House yesterday for authorising wiretaps without court oversight, and accused President George Bush of repeatedly breaking the law. The strongly worded speech makes Mr Gore the most prominent political figure in America to weigh in on the wiretapping scandal.
| That's not true, lots of nutty Dems have whinged on over this. |
Mr Gore, who lost the 2000 election to Mr Bush following the intervention of the supreme court, also went further than other Democratic critics in accusing the president of wrongdoing. Mr Gore said yesterday that the decision to bypass the courts was part of a pattern of behaviour from the Bush administration of "indifference" to the constitution.
| To be distinguished from trying to get the Florida courts to steal the election for you, Al? |
"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 insistently," Mr Gore said in a speech delivered to mark Martin Luther King day.
| I guess if you repeat the assertion often enough it's true, so long as you're a Democrat. |
"A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government," he said.
One could make a carefully-constructed argument about wiretapping and the need to distinguish tapping the communications of terrorists versus tapping those of ordinary Americans. One could argue that a firewall is needed between the two, and that the President's actions, though well intentioned, were eroding that firewall. To make that argument stick, one would would need to present it in as calm and dispassionate manner as possible, rising about ordinary politics to be an erudite senior statesman.
Instead, the Dems trot out good old Al, the latest in a series of fire-breathing, screaming Dhimmis. This effort may play to the Kos kiddies, but average Americans have already switched them off. What distinguishes Al's rant from that of John Conyers, or Jay Rockefeller, or Nancy Pelosi? It's all blubbering, screaming bile. Who wants to listen to that? |
In yesterday's speech, Mr Gore also called for an independent counsel to investigate the secret wiretap programme.
| Oh yasss, we couldn't possibly figure this out without an independent counsel. Or two. Or three. |
He ranked the operation with other controversial decisions by the administration in the war on terror, including its holding of "enemy combatants" indefinitely without trial, and its justification of harsh interrogation techniques. "The disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties," he said.
Mr Bush insists that he acted within the law and that Congress implicitly authorised the eavesdropping when it allowed the use of force in response to the 9/11 terror attacks. However, yesterday's broadside from Mr Gore increases the pressure on the White House to offer a fuller explanation of its decisions.
| Only in the minds of al Guardian. |
The Senate judiciary committee plans to hold hearings next month into the legality of the NSA eavesdropping, and the Republican chairman, Arlen Specter, has indicated that he is sceptical of the Bush administration's assertions that it acted within the law.
| Even Specter misunderestimates Bush. Arlen's going to look pretty stoopid when Bush details just how well the program was vetted and reviewed by lots of Democrats, and how concerns were addressed in a timely way. |
Posted by: Steve White 2006-01-17 |
