Nixon/Cheney ‘04

Looks like Bush may not be so much a Reaganaut as a Nixonian democrat. From Americablog, via The Poor Man:

NBC has acknowledged that they have information to suggest that Bush may have spied (be spying) on CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and that NBC is currently investigating that very possibility. This isn’t just conjecture anymore, NBC has confirmed it.
You can read about how NBC changed the transcript of the interview after we reported on it here.
And you can read how spying on CNN’s Amanpour could end up involving Bill Clinton, John Kerry and General Wesley Clark here.

I had to change my pants after reading that.

It’s dangerous to hope that this is true, of course, for at least two reasons –

(1) Those of us who believe the president is a tyrant or trying to become one are likely to be biased by that assumption, to the point of believing things we probably shouldn’t. This is bound to make us look rather silly if the truth turns out to be different.

(2) We’re probably fucked if this is true, because it means Bush actually is a tyrant. And if that’s the case, we probably don’t have a Congress with sufficient cojones or sense of national civic duty to depose their partisan leader. And anyway, we won’t know soon enough, as the Alito hearings next week will probably not get stalled, and we’ll have that ideological, executive-enabling asshat on the court, who’ll give Bush all the power he asks for.

Disbelief is even more dangerous, of course. We need to suck it up and get to work on vetting this story, and then be prepared to take necessary steps to impeach the president if this is true. And we’d better be ready to get harassed, assaulted, arrested, or disappeared if it is.