WASHINGTON - President Bush did not confirm or deny a newspaper report Thursday that the National Security Agency was collecting records of tens of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls.
"Our intelligence activities strictly target al-Qaida and their known affiliates," Bush said. "We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans."
USA Today, based on anonymous sources it said had direct knowledge of the arrangement, reported that AT&T Corp., Verizon Communications Inc., and BellSouth Corp. began turning over records of Americans' phone calls to the NSA shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Bush said any domestic intelligence-gathering measures he's approved are "lawful," and he says "appropriate" members of Congress have been briefed.
Bush said that U.S. intelligence targets terrorists and that the government does not listen to domestic telephone calls without court approval and that Congress has been briefed on intelligence programs.
He vowed to do everything in his power to fight terror and "we will do so within the laws of our country."
So you can pretty much bet that the NSA is spying on millions of American citizens with this new access of phone numbers. And you can pretty much guess that Karl Rove is looking into the phone records of Howard Dean, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and a number of other top Democratic leaders. It is just incredible.
Can we impeach him now?
ReplyDeleteWhen exaclty can we start the impeachment process?
How about now?
NOW?!!!!
I would love nothing more than to impeach this president. But I doubt that it will ever happen. The first problem is that the Democrats need to take over the House of Representatives, in order to start the impeachment proceedings against Bush. The impeachment trial itself may take about six months to a year, considering the time it took for the Clinton sex scandal and impeachment trial. Finally, the Democrats need to get investigations started against the White House for all the scandals we've seen. My guess is that if the Democrats do take over the House, they have less than two years to conduct the investigations (with the Bush administration stonewalling of course), draw conclusions on the investigations, and still prepare for impeachment proceedings--I doubt that the Democrats can do that within two years.
ReplyDeleteThe good news would be that if the Democrats do gain control of Congress, we have a check against this Bush White House. We can force the Bush administration to embark on costly leagal proceedings and investigations into their scandals--and the revealations of their incompetence and cronyism will certainly cause havoc for the Republicans. If we can show the American public the excesses of this administration, then 2008 could be a year when the Democrats would gain control of both Congress and the Presidency. It is a long shot here.