The Surge Effect

What prompted the turnaround in the Bush administration so that say they've decided to follow the law and end warrantless wiretaps?

The question is tackled by Glenn Greenwald, who sums up:

"This is what the Bush administration does and how it always operates. It has not conceded anything and it has certainly not done anything that mitigates its lawbreaking -- its crimes -- over the past five years with regard to eavesdropping without warrants. The president has been committing felonies on purpose and systematically for the past five years because he wants to. The fact that he might have decided he should stop does not excuse his lawbreaking and must not be allowed to shield him or anyone else from accountability."

The new hearings in Congress to provide oversight (their Constitutional responsibility) hasn't altered the thinking of The Decider. I have to think this is yet another delaying tactic by an administration which has ignored laws by the handful.

Call it the Surge Effect. A pretense of change which changes nothing, but further extends a single-minded desire to act with no accountability.

Or call it too little and too late.

Another example -- DOD lawyer Charles Stimson goes on the radio to name a list of legal firms which have been tackling the cases of detainees at Guantanamo, but after he's maligned and threatened them, his bosses refute him and then Stimson himself "re-defines" his statements in a letter to the Washington Post.

But this change of view occurs only after Stimson named these firms and their attorneys as possible collaborators with terrorists.