Listening To You – Mukasey Plays The Emotion Card

The Bush Administration and their never say die FISA/Immunity push are like cockroaches. You can’t kill em, and they never go away. Well, they’re back again. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has graduated from DC water carrier to full fledged traveling snake oil salesman for the Cheney/Bush Administration and their sordid attempts to cover their own criminal wrongdoing via retroactive immunity for telcos.

Last night, Mukasey spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco and got so emotional in his desperate plea for retroactive immunity and unlimited snooping that he he welled up with tears in the process.

… Mr. Mukasey grimaced, swallowed hard, and seemed to tear up as he reflected on the weaknesses in America’s anti-terrorism strategy prior to the 2001 attacks. "We got three thousand. … We’ve got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn’t come home to show for that," he said, struggling to maintain his composure.

Isn’t that special? Who from this Administration of criminals, fools and incompetents will cry for the Constitution that has been shredded? Who will lament the privacy of ordinary American citizens that has been lost? Who will shed a tear for the souls that have been tortured, beaten, extinguished and/or disappeared? That would be left to us I guess. There is no justice; just us.

Here, from the San Francisco Chronicle, are a few more highlights from Mukasey’s traveling minstrel show:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey defended the Bush administration’s wiretapping program Thursday to a San Francisco audience and suggested the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks could have been prevented if the government had been able to monitor an overseas phone call to the United States.
The government "shouldn’t need a warrant when somebody picks up a phone in Iraq and calls the United States," Mukasey said in a question-and-answer session after a speech to the Commonwealth Club
…
Mukasey also defended President Bush’s insistence on retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that have cooperated with the administration’s surveillance program, in which phone calls and e-mails between U.S. citizens and foreign terrorist suspects were intercepted without warrants.
…
"They have cooperated," Mukasey said of the companies, without naming them. "It just ain’t fair to ask somebody to cooperate with the government" and face a lawsuit for substantial damages, he said.
If Congress denies the companies retroactive immunity, he said, the firms will withdraw their voluntary participation and the government will have to seek court orders, losing time and potentially valuable intelligence and risking exposure of secret information.
"We face the prospect of disclosure in open court of what they (the companies) did, which is to say the means and methods with which we collect foreign intelligence against foreign targets," Mukasey said.

Madness! Madness! Madness! Crikey, it does not matter one iota how much this stuff is completely debunked, they just trot it out with impunity again and again.

The reason I am posting this, other than as general informational courtesy, is that EW is not the only one that has been on vacation; so too has been the Congress and, as to the FISA/Immunity fight, all of us. The Cheney/Bush surrogates have, undoubtedly, not been on vacation and have been plying their wishes and snake oil to the blue dogs and others to set up their next legislative push. When you see Mukasey working the room in San Francisco, the home of EFF, the AT&T Folsom Facility, Pelosi, DiFi and the conservative perceived heart of the liberal base, you know the game is on. We need to saddle up and get ready as well; because next week is time to get back to work on slaying the twin headed FISA/Immunity beast.

ERRATA: I really struggled with the video clip selection here. I must be growing up or something because I put up the one that actually showed Mukasey at the Commonwealth Club in Frisco. However, the last 3/4 of this video is what I really wanted to put up instead. Seeing, feeling, touching and listening to you; thats what the Bushies want to do.