Parting shots²

[unixronin]

Looks like the Bush Administration is determined to do as much damage as it can in the month and a half or so it has left.

Some highlights:

[FBI] Agents will be allowed to use informants to infiltrate lawful groups, engage in prolonged physical surveillance and lie about their identity while questioning a subject’s neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends.  The changes also give the F.B.I. — which has a long history of spying on civil rights groups and others — expanded latitude to use these techniques on people identified by racial, ethnic and religious background.

The administration showed further disdain for Americans’ privacy rights and for Congress’s power by making clear that it will ignore a provision in the legislation that established the Department of Homeland Security.  The law requires the department’s privacy officer to account annually for any activity that could affect Americans’ privacy — and clearly stipulates that the report cannot be edited by any other officials at the department or the White House.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has now released a memo asserting that the law “does not prohibit” officials from homeland security or the White House from reviewing the report.  The memo then argues that since the law allows the officials to review the report, it would be unconstitutional to stop them from changing it.  George Orwell couldn’t have done better.

(Emphasis above mine.)

One last-minute change Mr. Bush won’t be making: He apparently has decided not to shut down the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the most shameful symbol of his administration’s disdain for the rule of law.

Mr. Bush has said it should be closed, and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and his secretary of defense, Robert Gates, pushed for it.  Proposals were prepared, including a plan for sending the real bad guys to other countries for trial¹.  But Mr. Cheney objected, and the president has refused even to review the memos.  He will hand this mess off to his successor.

So, what, now the Vice-President is telling the President what to do?

A lot of the provisions in this article are qualified with "we expect".  How firm those expectations are, or what they're based on, is not stipulated.

[1]  Presumably other countries that don't have inconvenient qualms about extracting confessions via torture.  If — IF — we actually have enough evidence against them to try them, then why aren't we trying them here in the US?  And if we DON'T have enough evidence to try them even under the no-due-process rules passed by this administration for accused terrorist suspects, then why are they still imprisoned?  One of the historical legacies of the second Bush administration will be the creation of the idea of classes of people so dangerous that they cannot be allowed free, yet so innocent that they cannot actually be charged with anything.

[2]  Literally seconds before posting, I realized I'd typoed the subject as "Parting shits".  Innocent typo or Freudian slip...?  You be the judge.  (Though I note in defense that the legend has completely worn off my i and o keys.)³

[3]  No, I don't fully touch-type.  So sue me.

NYT article pointer credit to MSgt wcg.