Party lines

Next time you're on the phone, be sure to say hi to all the NSA personnel listening in. And don't say anything negative about the administration or discuss oil prices, the war in Iraq, Ramadan or anything French. Unless you want to wake up in Uzbekistan.

President Bush said Monday he intends to continue using secret wiretaps to monitor activities of people in the United States suspected of being connected to al Qaeda.

"To save American lives we must be able to act fast and to detect these conversations so we can prevent new attacks," Bush said during a year-end news conference at the White House.

It's too bad that Bush wasn't interested in acting fast on August 6, 2001. But hey, he was on vacation.

"So, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, I authorized the interception
of international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and
related terrorist organizations."

"I've reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September 11 attacks and I intend to do so for so long as the nation faces a continuing threat from an enemy that wants to kill American citizens," Bush said.

For the interceptions of these communications to be consistent with U.S. law, the interceptors would need a warrant. What Bush has authorized is ignoring the law. If the eavesdropping were consistent with U.S. law, special authorizations from Bush would be unnecessary.

Simply saying what you're doing is "consistent with U.S. law" doesn't make it so. But given the results the administration has gotten from repeating lies over and over, you can hardly blame them for trying. It's up to us to decide when we're going to reject their lies.