The hits just keep coming

The Bush Administration has been riding such a wave of good will as of late, that you have to ask yourself, what great stuff can it do next?
That, of course, would be today’s revelation that, under the lead of, inter alia, Director of Central Intelligence designee General Michael Hayden, the National Security Agency obtained millions upon millions of telephone records from American citizens.
For his part, the President testily told the press corps (without stopping to take questions) that “this is just Al Qaeda… we’re just investigating Al Qaeda…” Because, as we know, a group believed to consist of at most a few thousand people world-wide (or as few as 200) would involve the phone records of millions of Americans.
Or, to coin a phrase… bullshit.
This is called “a power grab.” In the name of “combatting terrorism”, the Bush Administration has pretty much already crossed several lines denominating the road to dictatorship… locking up citizens, legal residents and aliens alike without charge, counsel, or any legal recourse? Check. Eavesdropping on whomever it wants without warrant or other oversight? Check. Taking upon itself the right to ignore any Congressionally passed law “in the name of national security”? Check. So really, this is kind of old news, though the scale and the players involved (especially General Hayden) make this news, of course.
So? We had already assumed that the Government was reading our e-mails and listening to our phone calls; now we know it is reading our phone bills… best keep those telephone-sex calls to an explainable minimum folks, because that’s what this is about (as if you hadn’t figured that out either.)
The answer to whether our country would survive the post 9-11 world intact is pretty much being definitively answered in the negative… and al Qaeda has had remarkably little to do with any of it.