War On Reality Part 30 ; We Don't Recall Having Any Respect For You For A Long Time

The ability to not recall any past events on Capitol Hill seems to be spreading from the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the Vice President Dick Cheney.

When asked by CNN's Larry King, Mr Cheney cannot recall authorising the hospital bed visit to John Ashcroft to push him to certify the intelligence gathering programme.

Tell The Truthiness ; 'I don't recall' is as worse than saying 'yes', have some guts Mr Cheney, if not, borrow some from Mr Chertoff, he's got plenty of guts (with feelings) to spare.

War On Reality Part 29 ; We've Only Scratched The Surface

It turns out the surveillance carried out by the Bush administration that we've all been outraged at is actually far deeper than we all thought.

Using once again that old chestnut, an executive order, in late 2001 increased snooping on anyone suspected of being connected with potential terrorists was ordered.

Tell The Truthiness ; Who is really that surprised at this?

War On Reality Part 21 ; Thompson's Fictional Watergate Whistleblowing?

Someone's suddenly researched deep enough to have read Senator Thompson's memoir about the Nixon fall from grace and found a clue that's rather at odds with his crusading, self-styled, independent image in the public eye.

The former Die Hard 2 actor, who played Washington Dulles Chief Air Traffic Controller Mr Trudeau, actually tipped off the White House before the famed questioning the following day happened.

Tell The Truthiness ; It shows how far things have come, back during Watergate no-one knew about the wiretapping, until they got caught and the whole thing was exposed. Now, if everyone knows you're wiretapping and some in government make it public, you can't be taken to court, because its really a secret and no-ones meant to know.

How things progress, justice (or just-ish as Stephen Colbert would put it) in America.

Case On Secret Spying Dismissed Because Its A, Shhh, Secret

In a stunningly stupid example of the way domestic surveillence has extended post 9/11, the wiretapping case had been rejected on a technicality this evening.

In a nutshell, because wiretapping is supposed to be covert, you therefore cannot prove it goes on, they won't tell you outright, then you have nothing to bring a case against, because you have no evidence.

Yes, it's that simple, that stupid and that foolish. And yes, we're thinking that same thought as you.

Tell The Truthiness ; Perhaps Bush could class the whole of the War On Terror as covert, then if anyone does try to impeach him, or bring any legal action to his door, it will get thrown out because it was 'supposed to be our secret'. Really though, we shouldn't go putting ideas into his head.

Doing A Double Negative Leads To Proof Positive For Bush

So the subpoenas issued to try and overcover the murky dealings to do with the attorneys debacle have been rejected by the White House, they used that old chestnut ; Executive Privilege.

Guessing then that President Bush will remain consistent and do, or maybe already has done the same to the new set that were issued yesterday to dig into the phonetapping conducted post-Septembr 11th. Interestingly, many have already made it clear that this form of surveillance is illegal. Not in the difficult, takes a team of lawyers to uncover some obscure footnote from several decades ago. It's covered by some amendment or other. Does the White House remember what those are?

Tell The Truthiness ; Next they'll be using Executive Privilege to push in front of you in the queue at the grocery store, any excuse is ok now.

Bush's Bush Telegraph Just Not Legal, Better Get Back To Smoke Signals

LATE BREAKING NEWS

The US Senate has issued a subpoena ordering the White House to give up documents related to its surveillance of domestic terror suspects.

Tell The Truthiness ; Any walls left to fall down in the White House this week?