Wiretapping

In clear violation of United States law, the Bush Administration, especially the secretive National Security Agency, began mass surveillance via wiretap of American citizens. Although the FISA Court allows this to be done with the acquisition of a warrant -- and such warrants are granted for over 90% of requests -- the NSA chose to circumvent the court. This is a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, but the President rather dubiously claims that he has the legal authority to do so via the war powers granted him when we declared war against, uh, er, someone or something or other. Wherever terror comes from.

Curiously, the wiretap powers have been used against organizations such as PETA which are, presumably, not involved with al-Q'aeda terrorism. TO shore up support for this totalitarian program and illustrate how it was being used to fight honest-to-goodness evil, the president recently detailed a [9/11]-style plot to bring down the Liberty Tower in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, there is no Liberty Tower in Los Angeles, nor is there a Library Tower (the corrected version of the building's name; it has not been called the Library Tower for many years). Additionally, no evidence was offered that wiretapping in any way helped foil the plot (it seems, instead, that the plot's leader voluntarily backed out when he saw the carnage wreaked by the September 11th attacks), and the mayor of Los Angeles denies having ever been informed about the very existence of such a plot.

Still, you have to admit: wiretapping must be working, because there hasn't been another attack since the president started doing it! Now if only we could get some phones over in Iraq, and wiretap them...

Sources:

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060210-103600-7354r

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1601554&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/terror_plots;_ylt=AmLynY.05P5QsrpcYtjQtYCs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--