Comey's can of worms

By Libby

The Commander Guy doesn't want to talk about it because, you know, there's enemies lurking in every shadow and he's the Great Decider Guy who decides how to protect us and not to worry about our civil liberties. We should just take his word for it.

The NYT and the Washington Post were decidedly less reluctant to "move the issue the forward" in editorials today. The WaPo's was a real shocker, apparently penned by Fred Hiatt, according to Glenn Greenwald who has some tempered thoughts on Mr. Hiatt's sudden concern about White House malfeasance. Glenn also sums up the Comey testimony perfectly.

James Comey's testimony amounts to a statement that -- even according to the administration's own loyal DOJ officials -- the President ordered still-unknown spying on Americans, and engaged in that spying for a full two-and-a-half-years, that was so blatantly and shockingly illegal that they were all ready to resign over it. And the President's Attorney General then lied to ensure that this episode remain concealed. Mere one-day calls for a Congressional investigation are woefully inadequate here.
There is clear and definitive evidence of deliberate lawbreaking. In addition to Congressional investigations, there is simply no excuse for anything other than the immediate commencement of a criminal investigation by a Special Prosecutor. And the administration ought to be pressured every day to account for what it did here. This is not a one-day or one-week fleeting scandal. These revelations amount to the most transparent and deliberate crimes -- felonies -- by our top government officials, not with regard to private and personal matters but with regard to how our government spies on us.

What indeed could have been so awful that the most loyal of White House cronies would be willing to resign en masse rather than be associated with it? Therein lies the question I've been asking since the day this program came to light. I've always suspected they were engaged in highly illegal domestic surveillance from the get go.

Some days it seems impossible to know where to begin in unraveling the all-encompassing corruption of this administration but I can't think of a better thread to grab and start pulling than the NSA program. I have a feeling if we pull hard enough, the whole stinking cloak of secrecy will come apart at the seams.