Because we say so

I’m amazed/appalled by this particularly stupid response by Attorney General Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the NSA spying program.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked if the authorization Bush claims to have would also enable the government to open mail – in addition to monitoring voice and electronic communications.

“There is all kinds of wild speculation out there about what the president has authorized and what we’re actually doing,” Gonzales said.

“You’re not answering my question,” Leahy retorted. “Does this law authorize the opening of first class mail of U.S. citizens? Yes or no.”

“That’s not what’s going on,” Gonzales said. “We are only focusing on international communications, where one part of the conversation is al-Qaida.”

Oh, well, as long as that’s all you’re focusing on, we’ll all be okay.

I guess I can understand the stance in these sorts of hearings of, “Well, we believe we have the authority, and it’s okay, just trust us” — the alternative being “we’re not sure we have the authority” or “we’re worried about it ourselves” or “we cannot be trusted.” Administrations regularly assert the authority to do things by executive authority or based on broad extrapolations of congressional legislation (in this case, at least that the “war on terror” means “we can do whatever we want as long as we give the war on terror as a rationale, and that includes not telling you what we’re doing”).

But even without assuming that the Administration is full of evil tyrant-wannabes out to crush the nation under their thumbs, it remains both a dangerous precedent (wonder how the GOP would think about this sort of blank check in the hands of, say, Hillary) and an obvious place for push-back.

How much the Senate will push will be interesting to see. Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter certainly seems miffed by the whole thing, but how much of a possible election-tipping stink will the GOP leadership want to allow this to turn into?