Hightower Lowdown

Once upon a time, America had a strong president who reassured the American people, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Now we have a weak president who tells us that we must be fearful of all things all the time. He even color codes fear for us, most often flame hot. This summer, he used the scorching rhetoric of fear to cow congressional Democrats, scaring them into rubber-stamping a blatant subversion of our constitutional liberties. Democrats rushed through a law letting the White House eavesdrop on your and my phone calls and emails without bothering to get search warrants. They went along with the Bushites' demand that the attorney general be allowed to order that any of our international calls or electronic messages be monitored if he decides on his own that we might be communicating with someone who might be outside the U.S. who might or might not have even vague connections to some terrorist group. Yes, Alberto "See No Evil" Gonzales can click into entire telecommunications networks to intercept millions of innocent messages without having to show probable cause of illegal activity. Congress ceded this extraordinary reach to the executive even though there's already a quick responding court enabled to authorize surveillance of what it decides are legitimate terrorist suspects. It's arrogant nonsense for the Bushites to assert that they're above the law --but it's shameful cowardice for scaredy-cat Democratic leadership to go along with them.