Just one day after a news that an internal audit found that FBI agents abused a Patriot Act power more than 1000 times, a federal judge ordered the agency Friday to begin turning over thousands of pages of documents related to the agency’s use of a powerful, but extremely secretive investigative tool that can pry into telephone and internet records.

It’s about time. When you have a presidential administration passing rules that it breaks as soon as they hit the paper, you have a government out of control. Our federal government has grown too big and too nasty for its own good. The Executive Branch believes it can control every aspect of people’s lives and disobey the laws that it passes and is sworn to uphold. And people wonder why the majority of the people in the U.S. today don’t trust their government. George W. Bush and his foreign and domestic policies are the perfect reason why. Never has their been a president who gave us more reasons to hate our government. This is the true legacy of the man whose favorite philosopher is Jesus Christ.

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I hate it when news presenters editorialize. It happens more and more often in all media - television, radio, newspapers, and even the new media of Internet news. It’s all about presenting a particular point of view without apology or even trying to establish a veneer for another motive. Here’s an example from the International Herald Tribune on last night’s debate:

Giuliani, who has said he supports abortion rights, gave conflicting signals on the issue. He joined the other nine in saying he would not be upset if the Supreme Court voted to overturn the decision that legalized abortion. But later he endorsed a woman’s right to make a decision on whether to have an abortion.

“It would be O.K. to repeal,” Giuliani said. “Or it would be O.K. also if a strict constructionist judge viewed it as a precedent, and I think a judge has to make that decision.”

I didn’t watch the debate. I’ll say that right now. I didn’t particularly care to be entertained by a cast of bozos crawling all over each other’s backs to impress upon viewers how much like Ronald Reagan they are. The GOP should just let the man rest in peace, already. None of them are like the Gipper nor will they ever be, and if there was a candidate even remotely like Ronald Reagan he shouldn’t be elected. It’s not that I don’t (or didn’t) like Reagan, it’s just that he didn’t do enough for Constitutional causes (notice I didn’t say conservative?). What I mean is, we still have federal involvement in state-run education, arms control, over stretches of authority at all levels of government, etc. etc.

OK, back to Giuliani …

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Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, illustrated just how hard it is going to be, saying he would refuse to support any new legislation that didn’t have some teeth in it.

“The only person that is standing in the way of the funding for the troops is the president of the United States,’’ said Mr. Feingold. “His idea that he only wants the money if it’s exactly the way he wants, with an unending war in Iraq, is outrageous and we need to stand up to a president who says, look, unless it’s exactly the way I want it, unless I can keep this war going as long as I want, you folks in the Congress and the American people have nothing to do with it.”

The time to stand up to the president was four years ago. If Congress had been doing its job rather than letting the chief executive bully it into submission then the sons of bitches wouldn’t be in the compromising position they’re in today. Congress is a bunch of pussies. They won’t do the right thing when it matters, but when it comes around to popular opinion they want to pretend that they were for the right thing all along. This country was hijacked by Halliburton the moment the Supreme Court appointed the Bush Administration into office. Since then, it’s been Bush telling us it’s his way or no way, and Congress has gone along as if it didn’t have a choice. But beneath the surface it’s been Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz pulling the strings. Until Congress starts acting Constitutionally and confronts the executive office with balls and brains, instead of polls and breeze testing, the rest of us might get a chance to enjoy some liberty. But don’t hold your breath.

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President Bush on Tuesday demanded swift action from Congress on a war supplemental bill he can support, challenging Democrats even as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said a veto would delay money for U.S. troops and demonstrate the president’s refusal to work with Congress.

The Constitutional pissing contest between Congress and the President is, at heart, a battle for control. The President is seeking to control his own authority. Members of Congress are seeking to control theirs. It’s not about the money, or the troops.

Nancy Pelosi knows that if President Bush vetoes the bill Congress is sending to him that the legislative body can still pass the bill. They will have to get more votes than they’ve received so far but Pelosi and other members of Congress are expecting to meet their goal and sway other members of Congress to join them. The President has made it clear that he will veto any bill that calls for at timeline to withdraw. If a bill that provides enough money for the troops isn’t passed soon Congress will be the bad guy - every Congressman, Republican and Democrat alike. Dems in Congress are gambling that Congressional Republicans will switch sides and vote to override the President’s veto, thus saving the day for the troops.

In order for that to happen, there has to be enough Republican Congress members who believe the President has spent his political capital and is ending his second term politically bankrupt. It’s a gamble for the Democrats, but not an altogether risky one. They very well could get their wish. Time will tell.

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March 29 (Bloomberg) — The Senate today approved a spending measure with a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, setting up a showdown with President George W. Bush, who has vowed to veto any congressional demands to end the war.

The president has made it perfectly clear that he will veto any bill that sets a timeline for troop withdrawal. I guess that means we can expect a head on collision with the commander-in-chief and his political enemies on the homefront. The battle of wills, of course, will only injure those on the other side of the Atlantic fighting for the freedom of the people who still, after four years, can’t bring themselves to show any gratitude.

I was against the war from the beginning. I’m still against it on moral and religious grounds. As a Christian, I don’t believe preventive war is just. On Constitutional grounds, I don’t believe the president should have the authority to commit troops without Congressional approval except in retaliation of a known attack or in clear matters of self defense. In that vein, I have issues with every president since Harry Truman.

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Now here’s an interesting and surprising twist on the Supreme Court lemon:

In a case involving a Juneau, Alaska, high school student suspended for unfurling a banner that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus,” several justices seemed wary about giving a principal too much authority at the expense of the student’s right to express his views.

This is understandable. You don’t want those nazi principals having too much say about what goes on at their schools. Oh, wait, this didn’t happen on school property, did it?

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It could be a scene from Kafka or Brazil. Imagine a government agency, in a bureaucratic foul-up, accidentally gives you a copy of a document marked “top secret.” And it contains a log of some of your private phone calls.

You read it and ponder it and wonder what it all means. Then, two months later, the FBI shows up at your door, demands the document back and orders you to forget you ever saw it.

This is your country. Evidence that the PATRIOT ACT is unpatriotic. Your government has been bullying you around since before George W. Bush, but now it’s gone a step further. It doesn’t even deny it’s bullying you around. It just denies that you have a right for it not to bully you around. Don’t believe me? More evidence:

By all accounts, that’s what happened to Washington D.C. attorney Wendell Belew in August 2004. And it happened at a time when no one outside a small group of high-ranking officials and workaday spooks knew the National Security Agency was listening in on Americans’ phone calls without warrants. Belew didn’t know what to make of the episode. But now, thanks to that government gaffe, he and a colleague have the distinction of being the only Americans who can prove they were specifically eavesdropped upon by the NSA’s surveillance program.

The NSA is one of the most onerous American institutions in history. Worse than the IRS. What the IRS does in plain open view, the NSA does in secrecy and doesn’t even care enough to apologize for its indiscretions and blatant disregard for the Constitution. My question to all American soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors:

How can you live with yourselves knowing that your government daily violates the Constitution you swore an oath to defend and protect?

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