But It's Cute When Georgie Does It

Boy, I'd hate to live in one of those authoritarian states, where the government can track your movements and what you say without even going to a court or anything.

You know, like America.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 �- Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

This is entirely illegal. The government has been able to spy on people within the US for a while, but only so long as a) they aren't US citizens (though there are loopholes here) and b) the agency goes through a court.

Now, as it turns out the court involved is basically a rubber stamp. But that makes this more serious, not less. The US government has been breaking the law on US soil, despite the ease with which it could have in fact followed the law.

Never mind that it is by definition the government's job to enforce the law.

I've been calling for their impeachment for a while now. Come on, 2006...