Eavesdropping, like Torture, Is Wrong

Mr. Bush, what you did to Americans was simply wrong. No amount of Alberto Gonzales's weasel-wording, no excuses, no smug assertions that it's right because you said so will make it so. You, Mr. President, committed a crime. You wiretapped peoples' conversations because, well, because you said so. Those, sir, are actions of despots, not Presidents of democracies or, for the purists out there, republics. There is one reason that makes the action deplorable and, imho, impeachable: It was completely unnecessary.

You had no reason whatsoever to bypass the secret court system set up for just this reason. You could have tapped anyone's phone for up to 72 hours without a court order while waiting for a search warrant from the court, generally a rubber-stamp. If I remember the statistics right, the court has denied exactly two cases since it was formed in the seventies. It would have been easy for you to do the right thing and to have been unimpeachable (pun intended) in your actions in wiretapping on American soil. But you didn't.

Was it a power play? Was it an attempt, as I've long suspected of you, to become King George, if only inside the bubble of your own thoughts? Was it Cheney double-dog-daring you to stand up and be the President? Why, Mr. Bush, did you deem it so pressing to get information that you bypassed the very mechanism set up by the Congress to allow you to do so? Are you that power-mad?

I sometimes think so. Like torturing detainees, what you did by eavesdropping without court supervision was simply wrong. It was criminal. It is impeachable.