Little Victory

Perhaps it's not entirely true that the Bush administration can get away with selective obedience to the law. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is reported to have written to the the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee announcing that after more than a year of asserting that the authority of the president absolved him from the requirement to seek judicial approval before listening in to the telephone calls of Americans, Bush will now comply.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat from Texas states that "It proves that this surveillance has always been possible under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and that there was never a good reason to evade the law,"

Whether this proposed cessation of persecution of the American people results from some Pauline epiphany or from the realization that the new congress might have the power to make Bush face some consequences I don't know, but a step is a step. Who knows what might come next?

Still I have to agree with Glenn Greenwald that to celebrate the idea that the government has given a fuzzy promise to begin to obey one of the laws it has been flaunting is a sad state of affairs.