Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, has an opinion piece in the New York Times, "Help Me Spy on Al Qaeda" whose title alone indicates that it's a crock of crap. He asks the American people for help in spying.  He sounds like a government official in the former Soviet Union; so comfortable with authoritarianism.

McConnell praises the misnamed Protect America Act which is a flawed piece of legislation.

According to the ACLU which dubs it the Police America Act, here is how flawed:

The “Police America Act" allows the Attorney General (AG) to issue program warrants for international calls without court review.

The “Police America Act" has no protections for American phone calls and emails that are caught up in the dragnet.

The “Police America Act" provides only a phony court review of secret procedures.

The “Police America Act" requires only meaningless reporting to Congress. 

The “Police America Act" has a sunset that may be of little value.

McConnell then makes a pitch for retroactive immunity for telecoms as if these corporations shouldn't be held accountable for their complicity in Bush's crime of warrantless surveillance.

He disingenuously implies that "old" FISA requirements were inefficient. As Glenn Greenwald writes in an article about misquoting the law, FISA always allowed " warrantless eavesdropping for up to one year (provided other procedures are complied with)" and eavesdropping for 72 hours while applying for a warrant.

Even an ex-Justice Department official contradicted McConnell when he tried to present this lame argument aka lies about FISA before. 

But McConnell has a habit of lying even when testifying before Congress.  On September 30, 2007, I wrote a posting, "Lie to Them Once, Shame on McConnell, Lie to Them Twice, Shame on Congress" (on this site's September, 2007 archives) about McConnell lying to Congress that the expanded FISA stopped a terrorist plot in Germany and lied about the "old" FISA law costing the death of a kidnapped American soldier.

Under the Bush administration, there are too many military men heading intelligence agencies, for example, McConnell, the DNI, Michael Hayden at the CIA; more than at any time since WWII.  Their loyalties seem to lie with King George and not the Constitution. 

Apparently, the United States is now ruled by an imperial oligarchy, which explains McConnell's opinion piece and the claim by the administration that the president is not answerable to any law.  Below is part of a speech presented by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) that has a direct bearing on Mike McConnell's indefensible, prevaricating defense of unconstitutionality.

"For years under the Bush Administration, the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice has issued highly classified secret legal opinions related to surveillance. This is an administration that hates answering to an American court, that wants to grade its own papers, and OLC is the inside place the administration goes to get legal support for its spying program.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was given access to those opinions, and spent hours poring over them. Sitting in that secure room, as a lawyer, as a former U.S. Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island's Governor, and State Attorney General, I was increasingly dismayed and amazed as I read on.

To give you an example of what I read, I have gotten three legal propositions from these OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note taking could reproduce them from the classified documents. Listen for yourself. I will read all three, and then discuss each one.

1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.
2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President's authority under Article II.
3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President's legal determinations."

Are members of the congressional and judicial branches of government taking lessons in bowing and curtsying to the king and his minions?  Regular Americans will not.