Illegal AT&T Wiretapping Unlike most Americans, (yes, I'm American; I was born here in the USA) I grew up in a household that echoed with talk of the Soviet Union, of Soviet politics, of Siberian deportations, wiretaps, the KGB, identification cards and papers, and the routine surveillance of the general public in the name of "national security". These terms had a special meaning in my household; they were code-words; for each, there was a spine-chilling tale; for each, there was a relative or friend of the family, killed, imprisoned, or in hiding.

I knew I was in the Eastern European minority, but after the Cold War with the Soviet Union, after Ronald Reagan, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, after Joe McCarthy and Joseph Stalin and J. Edgar Hoover, I thought that each and every American understood. Hell, we knew why we were fighting Hitler. Right? Didn't we?

Apparently not: A recent poll by USA Today indicates that two-thirds of Americans approve of the routine warrant-less government wiretapping of the telephones and Internet connections of every man, woman and child in the United States. Not criminals, but ordinary people: grocery store clerks, corporate executives, high-school kids. Two-thirds of Americans have no clue what happened in Weimar Germany in the 1930's? Don't have a clue as to what the KGB was about? Two-thirds of Americans have forgotten, or never knew, who J. Edgar Hoover was, who Joe McCarthy was? This is a shameful time for America; a time when the country has fallen ill, and is loosing its way.

Anyway, here's the dirt, some sealed, confidential grand jury documents that were leaked to the press. Read this and weep for your children; they're the one who will suffer the brunt of it. And then get off your duff and impeach our highest ranking citizen traitor, the treasonous President George W. Bush. Its not too late. (Yet.)

News coverage: Wired - NSA Bill Performs a Patriot Act (Senate Judiciary Committee approves SB2453, authorizing warentless, unsupervised & indiscriminate wiretapping of all US citizens) - ABCNews - Does The Government Have Your Phone Records? - Washington Post-ABC News Poll - Poll: 51% oppose NSA database - Center for Constitutional Rights Complaint - Legal Claims in ACLU v. National Security Agency - Judge keeps papers sealed in AT&T spy suit - DOJ wants NSA wiretapping suits dismissed - NSA spying on phone records of innocent Americans is only surprising to the uninformed masses

Budget of the National Intelligence Program under Negroponte: 44 Billion Dollars. Lets figure that there are 100 million taxpaying households in the US. That means that $440 of your annual federal income taxes go towards spying. Got that? That's your tax dollars at work.