I wish I were the clever person who came up with that quip. Nope, it was Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), who (in an unrelated story) is also the hero of the hour in the network neutrality fight in the House.

In case you missed it, USA Today (in a shocking fit of investigative journalism) reported yesterday that the NSA has collected millions of Americans’ phone records from Verizon, AT&T, and BellSouth. They never got a warrant from the FISA court, the secret court established to approve all domestic surveillance. (Remember that pesky 4th Amendment guarantee “against unreasonable searches and seizures”?)

This is downright offensive to anybody who deserves to call themselves an American. Congresspersons from both houses and both parties, including Republican Senator Arlen Specter from PA, have spoken out against the clearly illegal program.

Among those who have decried the program, Markey is the funniest by far. His other one-liner: the news represents “another telecom merger between NSA and AT&T.”
If you are a Quest customer, by the way, write your phone company and tell them you appreciate their protection of your privacy. They said no to the NSA. Verizon, AT&T, and BellSouth, however, rolled over with nothing more legally binding than a “please, sir” from the NSA. Shaaaady.

The Boston Globe reports that President Bush has declared himself beyond the reach of several hundred laws. The President has never vetoed a bill, which would give Congress an opportunity to override him; instead, after the signing celebrations have ended and media people have left the building, he appends statements to bills he signs to law specifying his own interpretation of the Constitution and how those laws are to be executed:

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills – sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

Among these many laws, several have involved privacy, “whistle-blower” protections, and various civil liberties:

In December 2004, Congress passed an intelligence bill requiring the Justice Department to tell them how often, and in what situations, the FBI was using special national security wiretaps on US soil. The law also required the Justice Department to give oversight committees copies of administration memos outlining any new interpretations of domestic-spying laws. And it contained 11 other requirements for reports about such issues as civil liberties, security clearances, border security, and counternarcotics efforts.

After signing the bill, Bush issued a signing statement saying he could withhold all the information sought by Congress. [...]

On several other occasions, Bush contended he could nullify laws creating ”whistle-blower” job protections for federal employees that would stop any attempt to fire them as punishment for telling a member of Congress about possible government wrongdoing. [...]

Bush’s statement did more than send a threatening message to federal energy specialists inclined to raise concerns with Congress; it also raised the possibility that Bush would not feel bound to obey similar whistle-blower laws that were on the books before he became president. His domestic spying program, for example, violated a surveillance law enacted 23 years before he took office.

The entire article is worth reading.

Scripps Howard tells the story of a very ordinary married couple who paid off a large chunk of their credit card bill and thereby attracted the attention of Homeland Security.

Pay your bills, get harassed by secretive federal agency. That’s awesome. In fact, that’s exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Fourth Amendment.

Three cheers for those who would keep America scared (mov).