BUSH TOO MUCH FOR EVEN RUBBER STAMP COURT

So, one of the funny things about this whole Bush-authorizing-spying-on-American-citizens-without-a-warrant thing is that there was already a secret court that would often OK these kinds of situations in this and past administrations. In fact, it would OK so many of these cases that critics began to call it a rubber stamp for Big Brother. So, why would Bush bipass this rubber-stamp-court (which already seems pretty unConstitutional to me) and break the law? Well, as www.UPI.com is [http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20051226-122526-7310r|reporting], it seems like Bush was getting a little too nosey for even their tastes. Here's what UPI said about this:

Bush was denied wiretaps, bypassed them

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress by Hearst newspapers shows the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.

The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for surveillance by the Bush administration, the report said. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004. And, the judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history.

© Copyright 2005 United Press International, Inc.

Considering that there was a mechanism for Bush to get away with spying on Americans and that mechanism turned him down, this would seem to me to be pretty cut-and-dry evidence that Bush broke the law.

I really think it's impeachment time folks. Undeniably.