Fox News’s Time Is Coming
As noted by pretty much everyone, sources told ABC News that one of the things the Feds are doing with all that lovely domestic surveillance data is snooping in on the phone usage of major media outlets. As noted by Gene Healy:
The ’90s weren’t that long ago. And I remember a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over misused FBI Files and suspicious IRS audits. Over the last four and a half years, many of the same wailers and gnashers have cheer-led the concentration of unreviewable power in the executive branch, as if George W. Bush would be the last president ever to wield that power. And now, lo and behold, there’s the mistress of Travelgate warming up in the on-deck circle.
Unless they know something we don’t . . .
Also on Cato’s blog, Timothy Lynch suggests, “The phone records program may have already morphed into just a criminal investigative tool for the government.” Which is what has happened to most of the legislated PATRIOT Act provisions already: they’ve been pressed into service in drug and pornography and other cases.
Libertarians who still support the Bush Administration are utter tools.
Comment by Doug T —
May 16, 2006 @ 8:36 am
I have to say that, while it may be effective, relying on the Hillary bugbear in order to argue against a huge expansion of extra-Constitutional power for the executive is just depressing. Even 6 years later, the specter of Hillary is still a stronger motivation than the actual text of the Constituion, or hundreds of years of eloquent political thought, or a basic appreciation of one’s own liberty.
Is it too early to just start hoping for a gifted benevolent despot like Augustus to oversee our transformation from Republic to Empire?
Comment by El Comandante —
May 16, 2006 @ 9:49 am
The 1990s Clinton-bashing, IRS-hating, want-to-shoot-federal-agents-in-the-face crowd are some of the biggest cheerleaders for Bush. What a difference ten years make.
Comment by Jeff in Texas —
May 16, 2006 @ 11:23 am
”Libertarians who still support the Bush Administration are utter tools.”
Goddam right. I cannot fathom self-described libertarians who place lowered taxes (especially lowered taxes coupled with an actual expansion of the welfare state, insuring either government collapse or massively increased taxes in the future, or both) above concerns about the various forms of outright police state policies and programs being implemented. I like lower taxes, but the ”tyranny” of high taxes is nothing compared to the tyranny of actual, you know, tyranny. PLUS high taxes, eventually. I mean, really.
Comment by Barry —
May 16, 2006 @ 5:27 pm
No, they’re utter Republicans. Note that they didn’t support Clinton in such matters, even after Oklahoma City, when some domestic wet-work on the militia network would have seemed justified. They didn’t seem to have serious problems with Reagan, AFAIK.
Comment by Kevin Carson —
May 19, 2006 @ 1:04 am
Doug,
If I have to live under Augustus, I at least want to see ”Caesar” get knifed first.