Front Row Seats

Another entry from the department of no, it's really okay, we're only doing it because they might be bad guys: apparently, the National Security Agency (you know, that thing Condi Rice headed up before she replaced Colin Powell as secretary of state) under a presidential order has been performing wiretaps without benefit of a search warrant:

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."

Once again, at the same time they claim to be fighting a war in Iraq to bring freedom to the Iraqi people (uh huh), the administration is busily slicing and dicing freedom at home. Read the entire article here.

But I'm preaching to the choir here. If you are reading this, you probably already know that. The question is how so many other people can remain so blind. The White House has no shame, but then again, neither do the people who voted for Bush for a second term, nor those who refuse to see what is in front of their faces: that we are tumbling at increasing speed down the slippery slope into fascism. This is the decline of the American empire, and we are all witnesses. Unfortunately, it's an audience participation show.