Political Skullduggery

In a hopeful sign of things to come, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI) is accusing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales of trying to put one over on the Senate during his confirmation hearings.

Feingold's staff, displaying foresight that borders on foreknowledge, prepared a question for Gonzales about warrantless surveillance.

In a letter to the attorney general yesterday, Feingold demanded to know why Gonzales dismissed the senator's question about warrantless eavesdropping as a "hypothetical situation" during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2005. At the hearing, Feingold asked Gonzales where the president's authority ends and whether Gonzales believed the president could, for example, act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant.

Gonzales said that it was impossible to answer such a hypothetical question but that it was "not the policy or the agenda of this president" to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. He added that he would hope to alert Congress if the president ever chose to authorize warrantless surveillance, according to a transcript of the hearing.

Sounds like Gonzales was "disassembling", to borrow a term from President Bush.

Gonzales was White House counsel at the time the program began and has since acknowledged his role in affirming the president's authority to launch the surveillance effort. Gonzales is scheduled to testify Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the program's legal rationale.

The Senate should ream him out for perjury.

The program, publicly revealed in media reports last month, was unknown to Feingold and his staff at the time Feingold questioned Gonzales, according to a staff member. Feingold's aides developed the 2005 questions based on privacy advocates' concerns about broad interpretations of executive power.

This is simply too convenient to be mere "coincidence." Something tells me that the illegal eavesdropping was more widely known than has been yet revealed.

Besides, there is no such thing as coincidence.

Jungian "synchronicity" definitely, but "coincidence"-- never.