The whole immoral edifice is now starting to crumble.

This is extraordinary.

Having argued for years that it was essential for American security for the administration to bypass FISA, and to further argue that such behaviour was perfectly legal, the Bush administration has now performed an about face and announced that “any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

Why is this administration suddenly able to comply with a law that they previously stated was dangerous to America's security?

In his letter, Albero Gonzales claims that the administration has been seeking ways to obtain wiretaps under FISA since "the spring of 2005". Why did the administration not make this clear at the time? Indeed, why did they continue to argue that what they were doing was perfectly legal?

It's hard not to think that the election of a Democratic Congress, with the powers to investigate the governments wiretapping procedures, has brought about this change of heart. However, a promise not to break the law in future does not admonish any law breaking in the past.

The Democrats should continue to investigate exactly what the Bush administration has been up to. All the signs are that the Democrats won't let up on this.

"The announcement today is welcome news,” said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who leads the Intelligence Committee. “But it is also confirmation that the administration’s go-it-alone approach, effectively excluding Congress and the courts and operating outside the law, was unnecessary.”

Mr. Rockefeller added, “I intend to move forward with the committee’s review of all aspects of this program’s legality and effectiveness.”

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent post where he raises the following valid questions:

(1) Why couldn't the new rules simply have been instituted years ago, as part of a newly amended FISA (which the administration requested and obtained from Congress in 2001 and which Congress repeatedly asked to do multiple times both prior and subsequent to revelation of the President's lawbreaking)?

(2) If, as Attorney General Gonzales claims, they were seeking to develop new rules as early as the Spring of 2005 to enable eavesdropping under FISA, why didn't they say so when the controversy arose over their lawbreaking?

(3) For those who claimed that our national security was jeopardized and that The Terrorists were given our state secrets when The New York Times revealed that the President was eavesdropping without warrants, didn't Alberto Gonazles just "give the terrorists our playbook" by telling them how we are eavesdropping, i.e., that we are doing so with warrants?

(4a) Could they possible think that this "concession" (what we call "obeying the law") is going to forestall or preclude Congressional investigations into all of the eavesdropping they have been doing over the last five years without anyone watching?

(4b) And relatedly, is this magnanimous assent to comply with the law supposed to relieve them of the consequence from their lawbreaking?

(4c) And related further, are they now going to tell the Sixth Circuit that there is no reason to bother with figuring out if Judge Diggs Taylor was correct when she ruled that the President violated both the Constitution and the law by eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without the warrants required by law?

Greenwald also highlights how badly this has gone down with various Bush supporters who have, for years, accepted Bush's logic unquestioningly and turned themselves into public mouthpieces defending Bush's illegality.

If you were a Bush follower, and you were told (and, of course, by definition, believed) that the President's violations of FISA were not just legal but critical to our Survival and Ability to Defeat The Terrorists, and then suddenly one day, the administration, once Democrats took over Congress, announced that they could, after all, comply with FISA, wouldn't you feel betrayed, too, as though everything the administration was telling you all along about what is vital for our security was . . . . completely false and insincerely expressed?

For Bush followers who kept insisting that (a) The New York Times "blew the cover" on a vital national security program and (b) our ability to stop The Terrorists would be impeded by compliance with FISA, where does this leave them? If Levin's reaction is any indication, they won't be happy.

One of the things that I have found most disturbing over the past six years has been the way that Conservatives have abandoned fiscal responsibility and many of the other policies that they have long held dear in order to support an administration that even the British government now admit is, "the most rightwing American administration, if not ever, then in living memory."

They have found themselves in the mind-boggling position of supporting torture, extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay and abuses too numerous to mention.

Now that he has lost his "rubber stamp Congress" Bush appears to be folding his deck, finally admitting that what he once claimed to be perfectly legal, might not survive Congressional scrutiny.

However, Bush was only able to get away with his illegal actions because Republicans lined up behind him, supporting him even when what he was asking for was blatantly immoral.

It is possible to enjoy a moment of schaedenfraude as these Republican mouthpieces scramble to regain their lost dignity, but even such moments of transitory satisfaction offer no adequate compensation or legal recompense for the level of criminality that this regime has engaged in.

Bush and his neo-con thugs, I can honestly think of no other way to describe them, have behaved with a startling disregard for the law, and have largely been supported as they have done so by the Republican Party.

The whole immoral edifice is now starting to crumble. If the Republicans want to put some distance between themselves and the acts of criminality that they have openly endorsed, they would do well to consider impeachment.

If only to put a line in the sand declaring that future President's must never behave in the way that they have permitted Bush to behave.


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tag: electronic, surveillance, FISA, war on terror, most right wing administration ever, Republicans, wiretapping, Bush, Gonzales,