Narcissistic Sociopathic Alcoholic

Gee. Who could I be about to speak about?

:)

Anyway, one of the hallmarks of these seriously flawed individuals is that they lie when they don't need to. TalkLeft has an excellent analysis of the FISA laws. In case you don't know it, FISA stands for Federal Intelligence Security Act. It's a law that's been around for awhile that makes provisions for collecting clandestine intelligence while protecting civil liberties. One of the main provisions is to allow government officials to survail U.S. citizens after going through a subpoena procedure with a secret court.

FISA is obscene enough. In the history of these secret courts, the government has been denied what they've requested four times (out of thousands of requests), and those four instances were ultimately approved with modification. Bush sees even this rubber stamp as a limitation to his "power". He ignored it, signing an illegal executive order to require NSA to spy on U.S. citizens. Mind you, he didn't really even need to violate the law to accomplish his goal. He did so capriciously. A true hallmark of a sociopath.

Looking at the FISA numbers, there have been a total of over 20,000 requests since the law was enacted in 1979. Four have been denied (and later approved). The twenty six year average of FISA requests is 738/year. The FISA request average since Bush came into office is nearly double, 1330/year. And these numbers do not include the illegal spying done by Bush.

As a side note. Several NSA employees refused to participate in the intelligence gathering, citing it's illegality. Patriots...each one.