Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

Today Bush signed into law the new eavesdropping bill, which overhauled rules about government “surveillance” and granted immunity to the telecommunications companies that open the door to government spying. It is a bill many are calling a cop-out and capitulation by Democrats in Congress.

It’s amazing the civil liberties people will give up in order to remain “free.” How far will we go? After all, the youngest of this generation doesn’t remember what it was like not to have to follow arbitrary rules set by some sketchy 1984-ish “Department of Homeland Security.” Remember when airport guards didn’t think you were a terrorist until proven innocent? Remember when they let you bring yogurt on the plane without accusing you of trying to smuggle flammable liquid aboard? Remember when you didn’t have to take your shoes off go to through the metal detectors? How far will we let it go before we stand up and exclaim, “This is too much!” – or will we ever?

Bush tries to rationalize the bill, trying to take credit for the fact that we haven’t been attacked again. Let’s not forget that we hadn’t had an attack on American soil (Oklahoma and Columbine notwithstanding) in the eight years prior to September 11 either (following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing), and somehow we managed to get through those eight years without watching our civil liberties slip away from us. Had Bush actually been in the White House doing his job and listening to the intelligence being bombarded at his team right and left, perhaps we would have continued our winning streak of keeping terrorist attacks off US soil. You can’t blame the 9-11 attacks on American civil liberties. The intelligence was there, if only they had been willing to listen to it. Instead, Bush was on vacation.

On the bright side, the same news article finally describes Bush properly, as few others have done: as “an unpopular lame-duck president.” That’s putting it lightly. I guess he’s trying to see just how much damage he can do in his remaining time in the White House.

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