too much irony
These two news items exceed my RDA for irony:
1). White House Press Secretary Dana Perino was asked "Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?" to which she replied, "In our opinion, no." ThinkProgress notes a few instances that should have been obvious even to an administration flack like Perino:
First Amendment: In September, a federal judge ruled that the FBI's use of secret "national security letters" to obtain citizens' personal data from private companies for counterterrorism investigations "violate[d] the First Amendment and constitutional provisions on the separation of powers."First Amendment, Fourth Amendment: In Aug. 2006, a federal district court in Detroit ruled that the Bush administration'ss [sic] NSA warrantless wiretapping program was unconstitutional, violating the "separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III."
Article I: Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June, then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales attempted to justify the administration's detainee policy by claiming, "There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution." (Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the Contitution [sic] reads: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.")
Article II: In June, House investigators revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney had exempted his office from an executive order order designed to safeguard classified national security information by claiming that he was not an "entity within the executive branch."
2). Bush, commenting on Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf's reliance on his military history, said:
"[y]ou need to take off your uniform...You can't be the president and the head of the military at the same time."
It appears that Chimpy McFlightSuit is as unaware of the extent that those words apply to him and many of his actions during the six years since 9/11. As reprehensible as Musharraf is, his military uniform is at least earned; one can't quite say that about Generalissimo El Busho with his TANG AWOL questions still unresolved.