As if I didn't have enough reasons to be pissed at the Bush White House

I was listening to the domestic spying hearings on NPR this morning, and (of course) listening to Gonzales pissed me off, as did listening to the sympathetic Republicans on the panel. I think all the Republican senators, particularly the ones from the states in the middle of the country that tend to be large and rectangular (Brownback, Coburn, etc.) should be fitted with collars that give them an electric shock every time they mention 9/11. Once again, boys and girls, "Hey! Remember 9/11?" is not a response to, "Umm, why exactly did you think that conducting surveillance against US citizens without a warrant was legal, and if you thought you needed to do it, why didn't you get the law changed so you could?" Republicans don't seem to get this. Mentioning 9/11 seems to be an almost reflexive response to any criticism. Hence, I think they need some form of psychological conditioning to train them out of it, and my preference would be something involving painful electrocution.

As for Gonzales, he at least was actually responding to the legal issues, albeit with contradictory and nonsensical responses. The Administration's position is that, well, yes, so technically FISA says we have to get a warrant (details, details), but it provides a back door for "legislation that dictates otherwise," and you should have known we'd want to conduct warrantless spying when you passed the PATRIOT act despite the fact that neither PATRIOT nor any other war authorization legislation ever said jack shit about anything even remotely related to warrantless spying.

Gonzales/Bush's argument strikes me as roughly equivalent to saying, "Well, mom, you said I could go play at Billy's, and you must have known that there's a strip club in the same town that Billy lives in, so in effect you told me I could go to the strip club."

Gonzales is such a douchebag. I at least enjoyed hearing Durban take him to task on issuing contradictory statements.

Gonzales: "We didn't violate FISA."
Durban: "But the Justice Department just last week issued a memorandum saying that FISA was too restrictive and the executive was forced to supercede it!"
Gonzales: "These are not the droids you are looking for."

I hate the neocons. I really do.