It's Presidents' Day Weekend. A time of reflection and relaxation for most. I know that I'll be doing some of each myself. Today, I'm reminded of Nixon's trip to China. It was a legendary diplomatic achievement, one of our nation's finest. Despite the transgressions of Watergate and the ensuing scandal, no one can take China away from Nixon. So how will scholars and historians view the current administration? I have a theory.

Based on everything we've seen so far, the incompetence, the bold faced lies to congress and to the American people, the political manhandling of our nation's scientists, the blatant violations of international law and treaties to include the Geneva Convention, and the current struggle to consolidate more power in the executive branch than has ever been allowed, I think that they'll view the current administration as the greatest our country has ever known.

George W. Bush, will be celebrated as a visionary leader who laid the foundations for a peaceful, democratic middle east. His administration, though dogged by an overly critical class of digitally enabled navel gazers and fringe elements of the mainstream media, will be universally recognized for its efficiency, competency, and fiscal acumen. By the end of the century, George W. Bush will be immortalized on Mount Rushmore.

Let's face it. The GOP currently controls both houses of congress, the white house, and the supreme court. They have successfully managed the media portrayal of every political topic from abortion to the environment to the economy to the extent that the average American thinks things are OK right now. This is bad.

How bad is it? Let's put it this way, last weekend, the vice president shot a man in the face, and this was enough to set the news media into enough of a frenzy that that the unwarranted wiretapping of perhaps millions - and at least thousands - of Americans will escape a congressional investigation. Not only that, but Congress is now drafting a bill which will exempt NSA wiretapping from the 1978 FISA laws.

As a former service member specializing in communications intercept and translation I was subject to these laws. I know very well the guidance and restrictions they provide to protect American civil liberties. And to those who consider the current circumstances of the so called War on Terror to be grounds to waive strict adherence to these laws, I say this:

These laws were designed during the Cold War. The United States waged this war against an enemy who threatened not the destruction of one of our cities, but a war of such profound proportion as to promise the swift and sure eradication of human existence as we know it. And yet during this war the FISA laws were proposed, enacted and adhered to by the NSA and every other intelligence gathering agency in the United States of America because that's who we are.

The world DID NOT change on September 11, 2001. We have ALWAYS been under threat, and yet have maintained the faith that every individual in this nation is "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

If we turn a blind eye to FISA now, we might as well start chipping away at Rushmore today.

Labels: 9/11, fisa, George W. Bush, war on terror, warrantless wiretaps