FISA and the slide towards totalitarianism

I have stayed out of this fray this week largely because I wanted to see how things would develop after the Senate decided to authorize the amendments to FISA, also known as the Protect America Act. While I will have a more detailed review of the Senate's vote in my next post, I want to use this post to comment on the President's reaction to the resistance by House Democrats to the Senate's measure. For more on the legal ramifications of this proposed law, see my previous posts on the subject.

For the record, the President stated:

They'll have to ask themselves, 'Do you trust the intelligence community more than you trust Democrats who are beholden to their left-wing?' And that's the debate that this country is going to have.

And:

The American people will find it baffling that on a day that House leaders are trying to put off passing critical legislation to keep us safer from the threat of foreign terrorists overseas, they are spending scarce time to become the first congress in history to bring contempt charges against a president's chief of staff and lawyer. ... The 'people's House' should reflect the priorities of the American people, not the fantasies of left-wing bloggers.

I find both of these comments repugnant. In the last 7 Years we have grown accustom to random statements of absolute incompetence from Mr. Bush, however, this one in particular takes the cake.

Mr. Bush, the amendment to FISA you advocate is the most liberal and violent act of proposed legislative fiat seen in this country since the passage of the Espionage Act of 1917. This Bill would permit the Federal Government to tap the phone of any American citizen without the need for probable cause or a warrant. This law would do away with individual privacy on a substantive level. Moreover, this wholesale assault on civil liberties is far from the conservative values to which you claim to ascribe.

Mr. President, it is not the "left-wing bloggers" who are to blame here, it is yourself. This brazen attempt to subvert the Constitution, expand executive police power, and install yourself as a defacto dictator is an act so contrary to the notion of American Democracy as envisioned by this Country's founders that it is virtually impossible for you to continue to call yourself a conservative let alone a United States Citizen. The only kind of conservative you can rightly call yourself, Mr. Bush, is a fascist. You should be ashamed at yourself for rattling the saber of fear at the American people under the auspice of national security. Clearly, this is an act of Presidential insecurity, one that demonstrates how callow you and your administration has truly become it comes to dealing with the American people and your artificially inflated threat of terrorism. How dare you impugn those who are exercising their right to speak and inform the public of exactly how despicable these acts are and the effect they will have on the average American.

Merely Advocating for this kind of law is a flagrant violation of your oath of office. You, sir, should be ashamed of even considering imposing such an unconstitutional amendment on a law that originally operated well within the constitutionally founded notion of checks and balances. At this point, I call for your resignation, and the resignation of the Vice President, or for Congress to take the necessary steps to impeach you and the Vice President for a violation of your oath. A person supporting such an un-American ideology does not deserve to sit at the helm of the Executive branch of this government nor does he or she deserve the support of the electorate.