Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Bush Accused of Protecting the Country

Hinderaker's got an interesting exchange going with Eric Lichtblau at the Gray Lady regarding his paper's coverage of the NSA intercept program. I hope there's more to come.

What strikes me about this non-scandal is what a gigantic loser of an issue it is. There is no legal question in the matter. It has been widely used by previous administrations. The upshot is achieved only if you can somehow force a spotlight on it and create the illusion of an abuse of power, all the while crossing your fingers that you can find phonetap recordings of geriatric Norwegians organizing a John Kerry rally in Walnut Grove.

Of course, when it is demonstrated that the actual calls are directly related to national security in the wake of the most destructive attack on our soil, the hysterical critics appear not only frighteningly uninformed regarding the laws of their own nation, but dangerously naive as well. Blatant hypocricy might as well be thrown in too, given the total silence regarding the leak.

I find it difficult to imagine the Democratic strategist that pimped this issue as a winner. It couldn't be more lose-lose. Baffling.

There was a time when, issues aside, the Democratic Party could always be counted on to be politically shrewd. Never going too far, always playing both sides of the fence for posterity. Now they quite publicly appear to be little more than a mouthpiece for that morning's issue of the NYT.

What happened?

No comments: