Sigh. After only a few short months of paying attention to them, I have already tired of the Democrats and their assorted minions.
If nothing else, the idea that it’s somehow in the Bush Administration’s best interest to claim the NSA spying program was some advanced data mining procedure — and thus be able to wave the magic “it’s new technology, we can do whatever” wand — should suffice.
Most people in the United States are unconcerned with or for people they don’t know. The don’t care if you’re having a bad day. They don’t care if you’re getting fired. They tend to care about themselves, their families, their friends, and their toys, generally in that order.
Many people fully desire the government trample over any rights, any liberties, anyone they can in order to get “the bad guys.” Of course, who “the bad guys” are has been steadily morphing from a pack of right-wing fundamentalist nutjobs over there into “secular humanists” over here, but that’s another rant.
So long as the President and his fellows are seen to be stomping on the rights of those declared bad, he’s OK in their book, because he isn’t stomping on them. Data-mining, however, is stomping on their rights. There is no way around it: if the government is listening to all phone calls, the government is listening to all phone calls. Including those who give two shits about anyone but themselves. So long as it’s just Wiretapping++, then it doesn’t affect them, and they don’t have to pay attention. However, if the NSA is conducting data-mining, even the most self-centered of the un-enlightened egoists has a reason to oppose the Bush Administration.
Of course, they may be able to skate by legally using the afforementioned magic wand (the courts being notorious suckers for such rancorous arguments), but that also means an involved body-politic pissed at the right wing, which they want even less.