By Ezra
This is Bush's "fuck you" moment. He lost on the PATRIOT Act, lost on Social Security, is losing on the war, leaking popularity, lacking political capital, and finding his second term to be a series of very hard punches to the face. The mounting failures and multiplying blows finally became too much for him and so, finally, he's dispensed with political strategy and high-polling pretense and finally said what he'd been wanting to say all along.
Fuck you.
It's been the message rumbling beneath his administration for months now. The belligerence on torture, the hysteria on the PATRIOT Act, the McCarthyism against the war critics. But each time, at that last crucial moment, Bush backed down. Right when he seemed ready to let loose a flurry of invective, his handlers would coax him off the roof. He backed down before McCain's anti-torture legislation, started appending disclaimers affirming the patriotism of his critics too his speeches. He didn't crack. He kept following the strategists, calling for tactical retreats. Till now.
As Hilzoy explains, Bush's domestic espionage is illegal. Not quasi-legal or trapped in the thickets of some technical dispute over constitutional arcana. Illegal. And even Bush, when confronted with law-breaking within his administration, has recoiled from the prospect, promising firings and investigations. But not this time. Don't like his spying?
Fuck you.
Yeah he spies. And he'll do it some more.
And fuck the New York Times.
Media outlets who report the program are traitors to their country and enemies of the war effort. They're the ones betraying the country, not the guy in the corner shredding the Constitution.
And fuck the Senate.
If Arlen Specter thinks he's getting hearings on this, he's got another think coming. This is Bush's war and Bush's decision. Yes he's breaking the law. Yes he's spying with no judicial oversight. Yes, he is. He's the President, goddamn it, and if you don't like it, well fuck. you. This is Bush's country, everyone else is just living in it.
