Republicans Violated Laws and Constitution For Little Gain

So not only have recent reports shown that Cheney ordered the CIA to violate the law by knowingly giving false and misleading reports to Congress but the round of reports reveals that all that warrantless wire tapping that Republicans swear is the only thing standing between us and a nuclear terrorist attack was not nearly as useful as the Republicans claimed to the agents conducting it.

I think it should be fairly obvious that a democracy should not deviate from its standard constitutional protections unless doing so would yield an ENORMOUS benefit or avoid and ENORMOUS loss AND it is the ONLY option to achieve that. The Bush people failed both tests with this wire tapping. It was neither particularly useful nor was it the only way to achieve the ends for which it was designed. Republicans rushed to the extra-legal wiretapping on the ASSUMPTION that a more authoritarian approach is safer than a democratic approach. The ASSUMPTION was that democracy is a luxury that must be the first thing sacrificed in a crisis. One of the many things they don't realize is that democracy is the end not the means.

LTG made a comment on another thread that the Republican Party is the single greatest threat to American democracy today. I agree. Certainly these reports about Cheney interfering with the CIA and the so-so performance of the extra-legal wire taps prove it.