George Bush Is Engaged in an Epic Battle to Cover His Ass

Something astonishing happened the other day in the House: The Democratic leadership found some courage. After over a year of demoralizing, often inexplicable capitulation, they actually gathered the fortitude to push back slightly against Republicans on so-called national security issues. The Republicans' response was swift: They took their ball and went home, after a brief stop at a prearranged press conference on the Capitol steps.

Two issues caused the dispute: One, in a stunning display of rudimentary oversight, the House issued contempt citations for two former Bush staffers, Harriet Meiers and Josh Bolten, who've been ducking House subpoenas for months now. This was predictably dismissed by weepy Minority Whip John Boehner as a "partisan fishing expedition," a boilerplate cliche if ever there was one.

The second issue, which the indignant Republicans preferred to discuss, for obvious reasons, was the House Democrats' refusal to cave on retroactive immunity for telecom companies, like AT&T and Sprint, for collaborating with the White House in spying on domestic internet and phone communications, which, to be clear, was tremendously illegal.

What's less encouraging, but interesting, is that the Democrats were ready to sign off on extending the repugnantly named Protect America Act, except for telecom immunity. To Bush, this made the bill dead on arrival. That's right; Bush promised to veto the bill if it reached his desk without a get out of jail free card for Comcast.

It's hard to line that up with the apocalyptic tenor of Bush's exhortations regarding the bill. If the warrantless domestic spying provisions of the Act were not renewed, Bush warned, Osama bin Laden would rain fire upon us all. But he was planning to veto them if they came to him without immunity. Naturally, this makes no fucking sense. Either Bush is willing to risk another 9/11 to embarrass the Democrats, or he's lying when it comes to the threat posed by having to get a FISA warrant -- retroactively, after the fact -- for domestic surveillance. I think he's lying, but I suppose it could be both.

It's interesting that these issues are what it takes to really outrage Republicans -- threaten huge corporate giants with lawsuits, or exercise congress's constitutional oversight powers. Of course, it's only natural that the Republicans would shudder at the prospect of effective investigations being conducted in the House. If the Democrats actually start following through on the legal options to compel testimony, it's only a matter of time before everyone's implicated. But telecom immunity?

Republicans are, of course, fundamentally pro-corporate, even more so than modern Democrats. But to go to bat this hard on behalf of an industry seems anomalous even for them. All a congressman usually has to do for his biennial bribe is vote in a corporation's interests, not engage in tantrum theatrics. There's more than pedestrian corruption at work here.

Of course, there is the terror issue, and in a most perilous election year, Republicans would like nothing more than to be able to run on the "Dems are sissies" platform. If they can keep people frightened and badly misinformed, they may manage to make telecom amnesty into a winning issue for them come November.

But to do that, they have to lie. A lot. They have to feign outrage, and actual concern for the wellbeing of their fellow Americans. They're doing their level best. To hear Republicans tell it, requiring a rubber-stamp warrant, after the fact, to spy on Americans is like mailing plutonium to Iran. Bush's spiel was grade A horseshit from start to finish:

"Because Congress failed to act, it will be harder for our government to keep you safe from terrorist attack. At midnight, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence will be stripped of their power to authorize new surveillance against terrorist threats abroad. This means that as terrorists change their tactics to avoid our surveillance, we may not have the tools we need to continue tracking them--and we may lose a vital lead that could prevent an attack on America…. Instead, the House held partisan votes that do nothing to keep our country safer. House leaders chose politics over protecting the country--and our country is at greater risk as a result."

Then sign the bill without the telecom amnesty provision, and work on that part later. If it's nearly as vital as Bush says, he's providing aid and comfort to the enemy by not compromising, right?