Oh, dear. The Bush Administration is under the gun again.

1. "McCain criticizes administration for domestic surveillance

BY MICHAEL MCAULIFFNew York Daily News
WASHINGTON -

The top Republican contender in most presidential polls for 2008 slapped the Bush administration Sunday over its domestic spying program - and its insistence on using national security as a political stick.

Arizona Sen. John McCain said he doesn't think President Bush has the authority that he has claimed to wiretap Americans without warrants. But McCain added Bush could probably get the OK from Congress.
"Why not come to Congress?" McCain said on "Fox News Sunday." "I know of no member of Congress, frankly, who has said that if the administration came and said here is why we need this capability, that they wouldn't get it."

He also criticized comments last week by the president's top political adviser, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who told a national Republican meeting that the party should make security the top issue of the 2006 elections.

"Republicans have a post-9/11 world view and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 world view," Rove said, pointing to Democratic concerns over the Patriot Act and the spy program.

McCain shot back, "There's too many good Democrats over there who are as concerned about national security and work just as hard as I do. ... There's nothing wrong with disagreeing, with questioning, with debate and discussion." ...

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Thus, John McCain, a reasonable Republican.

2. Harry Belafonte, once a revered entertainer, has somewhat harder views of our current leadership:

"Belafonte: Bush administration backs Gestapo tactics


By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press Writer

January 21, 2006


NEW YORK -- Entertainer Harry Belafonte, one of the Bush administration's harshest critics, compared the national Homeland Security department to the Gestapo and attacked the president as a liar during a fiery Saturday speech.

"We've come to this dark time in which the Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended," Belafonte told thousands of people at the annual meeting of the Arts Presenters Members Conference.

"You can be arrested and not charged, you can be arrested and have no right to counsel," said Belafonte, who called President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" during a trip to Venezuela two weeks ago. Belafonte, 78, made that comment after a meeting with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

The Harlem-born Belafonte, who was raised in Jamaica, said his activism was inspired by an impoverished mother "who imbued in me that we should never capitulate to oppression."

He acknowledged that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks demanded a reaction by the United States, but charged that the policies of the Bush administration were not the right response

Bush, he said, was a president "who has risen to power somewhat dubiously and ... then lies to the people of this nation, misleads them, misinstructs, and then sends off hundreds of thousands of our own boys and girls to a foreign land that has not aggressed against us." ...

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3. The Kingsport, Tennessee, Times News wonders publically whether Bush has crossed over the line of unacceptable harm.

4.   And from Rock Island, Iowa, a reader writes:

"Under the rule of Mao Tse Tung, in Communist China communities lived under the fear of their own kind spying on them and turning them in for even disagreeing with the government. These people feared arrest and imprisonment for their beliefs. I can't help but feel that we no longer have a president leading this country, but a dictator that thinks he can do as he sees fit. This does not instill confidence in our current leaders, but fear of our neighbors and our government.

Greg Graf

Rock Island"

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I am sure the G-gang will accuse me of ranting here, so please forgive my intemperate dramatization.

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