Leave it to the awesome reporting of the Nation to remind us of historical
facts we may have forgotten about:
For the generations who came of age after the mid-1970s, it is worth
recalling why warrantless domestic surveillance so shocks the political
system. It needs to be repeated that the same arguments cited by
Bush–inherent presidential power and national security–sustained the
wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr., unleashed illegal CIA domestic spying
and generated FBI files on thousands of American dissidents. It needs to be
repeated that in 1974, the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon
included abuse of presidential power based on warrantless wiretaps and
illegal surveillance. It needs to be repeated that a few months later,
presidential aides named Cheney and Rumsfeld labored mightily to secure
President Ford’s veto of the Freedom of Information Act, in an unsuccessful
attempt to turn back post-Watergate restrictions on homegrown spying and
government secrecy.
View complete article
here.
They hated oversight then and they hate it now. It is obvious they still
believe the President should be the ultimate power in our democracy. If they
haven’t learned by now then they never will and need to be out of public office.