To Bush Administration, increase in Executive had little to do with 9/11

As I have often expressed on this blog, you never know how authoritarian someone is until they are given a position of power.  You can claim to be a libertarian, but might turn into a control freak when given access to potentially unlimited entitlement.  In 2000, Bush ran for president on a small government platform.  But ever since being elected, he has presided over the largest government expansion since World War II.

You might be thinking to yourself, "Well, we're at war, so that's okay."  But as Bloomberg reports, the desire for government expansion, with help from the NSA, began even before September 11th:

The U.S. National Security Agencyasked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring siteseven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimedJune 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.                

The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, thenation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach ofprivacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of VerizonCommunications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suitalleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W.Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S.Constitution, and seeks money damages.

``The Bush Administration asserted this became necessaryafter 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephoneinterview. ``This undermines that assertion.''

This report is analogous to the one by staffers of Senators who claimed that the Patriot Act was planned before 9/11.

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Other blogs writing about this issue: Daily Kos, Americablog, Damned Empire, MyDD, Lost Chord, Gideon Starorzewski, The town Crier, Russell Silver, The Flypaper Theory, Wot is it good 4, Picks Commentary, Ramblings from my Mind, Mad in the Middle.