Oh, Now I Feel So Reassured

Michael Hayden, former chief of the NSA and the CIA, in an op-ed piece in today's New York Times, says that the warrantless wiretapping program was lawful:

There has been much controversy about the lawfulness of the program. Here I must point out that agency lawyers — career attorneys with deep expertise in the law, privacy and intelligence — assisted their professional Justice Department counterparts in their review of the program but remained comfortable throughout with the lawfulness of all aspects of the surveillance effort.

Yeah, the same career lawyers who opined that torture was legal? Those guys?

The intelligence community during the Bush Administration apparently offered no objections as the Cheney Bush Administration used the Constitution for toilet paper. The president and vice president take an oath that has two parts: First they promise to do the best they can, and second, they promise to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

On both points, George W. Bush was a miserable failure. About the only thrashing of civil rights and liberties he drew the line at was that he resisted the demands of Torturer Dick and refused to send in the Army to make arrests within the United States.

The usual players, Dick Cheney and David Addington, were the ones pushing to use the Army for a law-enforcement function. One might wonder if either one of those gentlemen had ever bothered to read the Constitution, or if they had ever heard the words "possie comitatus":

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

And:

The Secretary of Defense shall prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to ensure that any activity (including the provision of any equipment or facility or the assignment or detail of any personnel) under this chapter does not include or permit direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law.

(You may have noted that one of the lawyers who said it was legal to send in the Army to arrest people within the US was John Yoo, who is a tenured professor in the Department of Fascism at Boalt Hall Law School.)