Newsweek has an excellent online column about why the admin was so carried with its desire to go ahead with the NSA wiretap/data mining program. The title says it all: Because We Can. The neocon cabal behind the admin is convinced that executive power has waned since the 'good old days' (ie, Nixon, when most of these crooks were cutting their eye-teeth politically) and wants to force the country (or at least, Congress and SCOTUS) to yield some of it back. Perhaps, not altogether a bad idea, but not with these bozos in charge.
The article misses what, to me, is the main problem with the illegal program. Whether or not the Preznit had the authority to do all this, the wiretaps are still, STATUTORILY, illegal. And as such, any evidence uncovered in the course of them, or arising out them, is patently illegal and inadmissable in a criminal trial. This, in the long run, weakens, not strengthens, the government's hand, in that even if they uncover something, they can't prosecute it (I guess extra-legal hit squads are next?). Additionally, every prosecution by the feds in the last four plus years is going to be revisited, to determine if evidence in the trials was obtained by illegal means. This is just a mess, but then, isn't everything these bozos touches?
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