Attorney General Gonzales Practices 'Double Speak!'

Speaking at the Air Force Academy in political science and law classes, Saturday, Nov. 18, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that critics of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance didn't understand the meaning of freedom. He said that opposing the program could create a "grave threat" to U.S. security. Recently a federal judge had ruled, correctly so, that the program was not constitutional. Vice President Dick Cheney had previously chimed in saying the ruling was "an indefensible act of judicial overreaching." In a strange bit of illogic Gonzales attacked his critics. "But this view is shortsighted," he said. "Its definition of freedom, one utterly divorced from civic responsibility, is superficial and is itself a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people." Last August U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, in Detroit, said it violated the rights to free speech and privacy and the constitutional separation of powers. She was the first judge to rule on the legality of the program, which is operated by the National Security Agency. Gonzales said it was a myth that American civil liberties were being compromised in the war on terror. "To achieve victory at the cost of eroding civil liberties would not really be a victory. We cannot change the core identity of our nation and claim success." That's a good example of saying one thing but meaning something else. Clearly this act, and others by the Bush administration, are unconstitutional and in clear violation of the FISA, something Bush himself had admitted in previous years until he "flip flopped!"