Bubble Boy's World Shrinks

President Bush claims he doesn't read polls. I believe that about as much as I believe that staying the current course will lead to anything other than Kurdistan and a civil war-torn Shiite Islamic Republic. A strong majority of Americans don't believe His Shrubbiness has the power to unilaterally defy both the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the FISE law by eavesdropping on Americans without a warrant, even one from a kangaroo court like FISE. And the Shrub knows it.

Today in Louisville, he continued his well-known progression of behaviors when coping with the inconvenience imposed on him by our laws and simple fact. First, when the program was revealed, he was defiant. Then he tried to shoot the messenger by going after the patriot who leaked the information. That having failed to improve the public's perception of his illegal acts, he pulled out the weasel-word machine and Republican Radio, seeking justification in obscure, unrelated legalities. Now that he's still way behind, he's not opposed to investigations, as long as they don't reveal the tactics....

Reveal the tactics? He's listening to your damned phone calls without a warrant, that's the tactic. The how is obvious: He's using these big white golf balls five miles north of me at Buckley Air Force Base or other installations such as Buckley's twin at Mildenhall, England. The what is easy, too. It's called data mining. So how is an investigation, as long as we're not revealing precise frequencies, decryption capabilities or intercept signal strengths, revealing tactics. The bad guys know what we're doing. They knew it already. It isn't the tactics we're interested in, Shrub, it's what to do with your arrogant, sorry, law-breaking ass. Then there's the blowback: The Shrub has just queered every terrorism conviction and every case currently being considered. The accused have the right to confront their accusers and to see the evidence against them. That includes secret intercepts. Now the challenge for the Shrub's Justice Department becomes proving the negative: Prove to me that my client isn't being accused based on evidence obtained through illegal wiretaps. Those of us with a blue-state education, literate, that is, know that proving the negative is logically impossible. So the Shrub's blow in the war against terrorism turns into a blow for the bad guys or just blowback.

But back to the Shrub's pattern, well known and shopworn. He's in the "reasonable guy" stage now but if you'd listened to his words, they're pinched with the barely repressed, "how dare you challenge me" little-boy snarl the Shrub affects whenever anything goes against his will. The reasonable guy phase will soon be over, we'll have gone from threatening to pleading (remember the "just let me torture every once in a while" phase in the fight for America's reputation?). Finally he'll cave in and stop the operation, or, as he proved in his signing statement (I reserve the right to break this law and torture prisoners if I fell it necessary), he'll say the program stops but will it? We'll have to wait for another patriot to leak the information to find out. Meanwhile, the tone of Bush's voice in Louisville reveals the bubble is shrinking and sometimes the unpleasant truth manages to get inside.