Bush blocked Justice Department's anti-terror probe

I don't know when the madness will stop here. I found this off Yahoo News:

WASHINGTON - President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the anti-terror eavesdropping program that intercepts Americans' international calls and e-mails, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday.

Bush refused to grant security clearances for department investigators who were looking into the role Justice lawyers played in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency listens in on telephone calls and reads e-mail without court approval, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Without access to the sensitive program, the department's Office of Professional Responsibility closed its investigation in April.

"It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had access. Why not OPR?" Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., the committee chairman, asked Gonzales.

"The president of the United States makes the decision," Gonzales replied.

Later, at the White House, spokesman Tony Snow said the eavesdropping program is reviewed every 45 days by senior officials, including Gonzales. The president did not consider the Justice unit that functions as a legal ethics watchdog to be the "proper venue," Snow said.

"What he was saying is that in the case of a highly classified program, you need to keep the number of people exposed to it tight for reasons of national security, and that's what he did," Snow said.

So the Justice Department lawyers, who were suppose to look into constitutional violations by senior Justice Department lawyers and White House officials that created this program, were denied security access to information regarding this eavesdropping program by President Bush himself on the grounds of national security. And the people who are reviewing this eavesdropping program are the same lawyers and White House officials who crafted this program in the first place. In other words, there is no ethical watchdog looking into whatever this administration is doing. Congress has refused to perform any investigations into the Bush White House, under a cowed Republican leadership. The Supreme Court has avoided taking any of these cases. Whatever rulings the Court has handed down--especially regarding the Gitmo prisoner's lack of counsel and trial, the Bush administration has pretty much ignored them. And now any Justice Department watchdog investigations into White House constitutional and ethical violations are being quashed by the same White House on the grounds of "national security."

Can you say George Bush = Der Fuhrer.