IT'S THE FELONY, STUPID

I cannot understand what it is about conservatism that removes your ability to perceive the passage of time. First, repukes try to convince us that everything ever said about Saddam's WMD are equivalent, whether it was said in 1991, 1998, 2002, or 2003. Get it through your granite skulls, guys. Situations can change from one moment to the next, so what on earth would make you think that something said when weapons inspectors are present is the same as when they are absent? The president clearly didn't know what he said he knew, and the majority of America now thinks of him as dishonest, and rightfully so.

Now, Vic Flametardi is trying sputteringly to read a policy statement about wiretapping from 1940, for pete's sake, as a defense of Bush's illegal wiretapping starting in 2001. That, when even a hermit in the middle of the Sahara now knows about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed in 1978. On what planet is authority given in 1940 a defense for a federal crime committed in 2001?

Even as precedent, it's incredibly weak. FISA was written to put wiretapping into a legal framework, to prevent abuses like those of disgraced Republican president Nixon. Vic knows that. At least, I hope he does. I usually treat him as a rational actor, but science has known of cases where people whose brains have been eaten away by a tumor or disease are able to appear almost normal to the casual observer. I'm not sure, though, that such a malady would also cause a normal man's voice to distort into a high-pitched whine...

JC