and I also have a bridge you can buy

Gee willikers, Uncle Sam! It's as if up to now we've only had to worry about the civil rights of our native Al Qaedans!

Why is it we don't hardly hear a peep from our politicians or our media, even from the few progressive elements that remain on the outskirts, about the real reason for this administration's interest in our converstions and our associations? I'm talking about our government's five-year-plus orgy of domestic wiretapping and the tracing of tens of millions of phone records. Hint: It's not because the Bushies are just nosy, and it's certainly not because they're trying to protect us from anything.

This evening Douglas Kelly breaks the media silence with a note which precedes his visual arts newsletter, the the "Douglas Kelley Show List". I'm copying the note's entire text, but it's the last paragraph [with my italics] that shatters the let's-just-continue-to-play-nice game:

May 18th, 2006, NEW YORK- Years ago during the Reagan era when the late Senator Daniel P. Moynihan quit as head of the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Intelligence he said to the effect, "Why should I waste my time, they only they only come here and lie over and over again, what is the point?" The ability to sincerely lie to Congress and the American people on national TV has been a career qualification for head of C.I.A. since I've been watching and on the basis of what I've heard so far, he's qualified, I don't believe a word he said.

Our new four-star chief spook looks like what members of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles must look like these days down at the Children's Memorial Saturday Morning TV Retirement Home in Boca Raton Florida? General Turtle looks a little hungry, will somebody please put a leaf of lettuce in this guy's cage?

Why would the N.S.A. go for everybody's phone records in the U.S.A.? Great Caesar Nixon's Ghost! What a stupid question? To go get after those pesky untrustworthy troublemakers; the press, the leakers, the whistle blowers, the protesters, the gays, women, mothers, Democrats, Lib-ber-rals, artists, any of those terror enablers who question an open ended war beyond the realm of oversight or accountability? (Besides the political intelligence from an analysis of such lists could be very helpful in the next election.) "Thank you General Bobble J. Turtle Head, sir! You're doing a heck of a job!"

It's not enough to control every branch of government; you gotta make sure it's permanent, especially if your players would all be subject to criminal prosecution under any responsible Department of Justice and Congress.

Why doesn't anyone seem to understand what's going on? The stakes could not be higher, yet what passes for the opposition plays the game as if the other side had any interest in the rules.

Uncle Sam is leaving.

[image from Micah Wright]