We don't need no stinkin' warrant!

The media’s response to the astonishing news that the Bush administration has been, and continues to, spy on American citizens, has been less than stellar. In fact, some members of the press are expressing the view that only liberal extremists are speaking of impeaching the president and that these views hold no credibility. Of course, this denies the fact that Republicans enthusiastically lowered the bar for impeachable offenses when Bill Clinton was in office.

What is even more telling about the media’s incompetence, or perhaps its actual complicity with administrations criminal activities, are even more under-reported stories that point to the politicization of the NSA by Bush & Company.

The first is a report by Raw Story that points out that NSA documents now show that then Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice authorized “President Bush’s and other top White House officials plan to wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the UN Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on the UN resolution that paved the way for the U.S. led war in Iraq.”

The other is a dairy entry from Lapin, a contributor to the Dailykos website. The report states that the NSA spied on then Secretary of State Colin Powell, Gov. Bill Richardson and Sen. Joseph Biden. It started with information requested by former Under Secretary of State, John Bolton. “It was revealed by Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) during Bolton's Senate Foreign Relations Committee nomination hearing that Bolton requested transcripts of 10 NSA intercepts of conversations between named U.S. government officials and foreign persons. However, NSA insiders report that Hayden approved special intercept operations on behalf of Bolton and had them masked as "training missions" in order to get around internal NSA regulations that normally prohibit such eavesdropping on U.S. citizens.”

Bush and Cheney have committed felonies by using the NSA to perform espionage activities upon American citizens. Now it is also evident that they used the NSA to gain political advantage over members of the UN Security Council to ensure there would be an Iraq war. And they have used the NSA to spy on members of the opposition in Congress, powerful Democratic state leaders, and even members of their own cabinet like Secretary of State Powell.

The only way to end this tyrant’s misdeeds is to ensure Congress does their duty by impeaching him, removing him from office and trying him in open court where he should be easily convicted and sent to prison for the rest of his life.