Isn't it ironic how we've all decided that the PATRIOT Act isn't patriotic any more?
Well, okay: Some prominent Democrats have certainly come out with Cheneyesque statements on the newly revealed NSA anti-terrorism surveillance. But it's pretty amusing to see Republicans like James "Fat Butt" Sensenbrenner and Johnny Isakson suddenly decide that the government doing what their own Congressional legislation authorized is way, way beyond the pale.
(Is that because a Democratic President who's not a "paleface" himself is executing it? We wonder.)
Anyway, it's quite the kerfuffle, and it's made for some interesting political bedfellows. Karl Rove and Dianne Feinstein think it's swell. Rand Paul and liberals are outraged. Dick Durbin, Harry Reid, John McCain and Lindsey Graham say it's routine. And hovering over it all is the ever-choleric, liberal-loser killjoy Glenn Greenwald — to whom, strangely, although he is gay, nothing is fabulous.
We cats can't say we're surprised by Greenwald's "scoop." You can't, in a total post-9/11 panic, pass a massive homeland-security law without reading it and expect everything to be hunky-dory later. Especially after that law has been renewed by Congress twice. But at least now that a veil has been yanked, maybe we can all talk about what we really want.
Despite the President's hoped-for dialogue in that direction, though, we cats aren't optimistic. We recall the days when the execrable Ari Fleischer said we should all watch what we do, and what we say — and was never called to account for it. Heck, now he's making money as a talking head on CNN.
Will America remember stuff like that as we have our national discussion? Hm.
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