The Illegailty of Bush's Wiretapping

I'm not very lucid in such matters, but the recent Federal Court ruling on the illegality of Bush's wiretap approvals for the NSA has the potential (if anybody chooses to act on it - a big if) to really be a watershed in the rest of this administration, and how we deal with the Bush court both historically and legally. What's really frightening for this Latin Americanist is how much the wiretapping policies specifically, and the Bush regime's policies more generally (perhaps most evident in his ideoological hyper-black-white worldview that paints an "us vs. them" attitude at its most looks like a [barely] candy-coated version of the military dictatorships. And if that seems to "radical" for some, bear in mind that, while those governments weren't "elected," they did witness popular support in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and elsewhere...

For a really good analysis/discussion of it, see today's post at Empire Burlesque, where the journalist mentioned is far more concise and informed on the issue than I ever could be. And, as he points out, the "just following orders" defenses that were so common from Nuremburg through Latin America in the present (see the stories about Argentina still dealing with court cases 23 years after it's military state fell, and the ongoing saga of Pinochet), we may see future examples of NSA employees pulling similar lines, all in the name of "national defense." The more things change geopolitically, the more they stay the same...