Tangled web

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!

--Sir Walter Scott

An article in today's New York Times spotlights an interesting legal issue regarding Mr. Bush's authorization of secret wiretaps, without obtaining subsequent warrants and approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The Times writes:

Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.

The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn... whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.

The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency's domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration's most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.

So, let me see if I have this straight: To begin with, Sheriff Bush and his deputies appear to have actually had some success in rounding up a few bandits and bringing them to trial. I guess in all fairness I should have been more aware of "the country's biggest terrorism cases" and "important courtroom victories", but I've grown so accustomed to the incompetence of the Bushies that I just wasn't paying close enough attention.

But now, that handful of valid court cases may themselves be jeopardized by the very methods used by the Administration to "protect" the nation from terrorist attack. And regardless of whether or not those illegal methods were fueled by hubris, ineptitude, malice, or (gasp) genuinely good intentions, they could provide the technicality that sinks those few successes actually achieved in Mr. Bush's otherwise ineffective "war on terror."

To put it simply, in the name of "saving lives" the President may be responsible for setting potential killers free.

I'm sorry, but any idiot who's even glanced at a television police drama, from Dragnet to Hill Street Blues to Law and Order, knows the importance of following legal procedure if your goal is a successful prosecution. The thought that covert and illegal actions by the President, Vice President, and Attorney General might now threaten to invalidate bona fide court cases, is, in a word, unacceptable. Mr. Bush's latest faux pas is just one more egregious misstep from an Administration that continues to believe it is above the law, and in so doing, is undermining the efforts of those who are legitimately trying to enforce that law and keep America safe.

I would think that even Conservatives would be outraged at this latest legal consequence of the White House's recklessness. It's one thing to try and defend illegal domestic surveillance as a necessary evil that's producing actionable results. But it's another thing entirely when those covert practices themselves threaten to undercut the dispensing of justice, for a technical reason that any 10-year-old would know to avoid. Seems kind of hard to defend that, even from the Right side of the aisle.

The Times article concludes:

Justice Department prosecutors... said they were concerned that the agency's wiretaps without warrants could create problems for the department in terrorism prosecutions both past and future.

"If I'm a defense attorney," one prosecutor said, "the first thing I'm going to say in court is, 'This was an illegal wiretap.' "

Incompetent. Illegal. Counterproductive. Secretive. Dishonest. The list of negative adjectives that can be applied to the Bush Administration for this and past misdeeds stretches on and on and on. How much longer can America afford to leave this bunch in control? It's time to clear the monstrous web of deceit and corruption woven by the Bushies out of our house for good.