Years of Poems and Spirits

Heard Nina Totenberg’s piece on Dick Cheney. She is such a masterful narrator that from her piece out comes the relief of a character central to one of the messiest and most divisive period in the U.S. history.

I hate Dick Cheney. He is at a very different level than other politicians I found disagreeable, such as GWB, Gingerich, even Lieberman or Helms. Those characters may be colorful but none is as subversive or conniving as Cheney. He is determined to use his knowledge of the rules and laws of a Republic to turn it into an Empire. If Jefferson were alive today, he surely would say: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of people like Dick Cheney. ”

Rantings aside, I am still not clear on how some of the transgressions instigated by Cheney passed all the institutional checks, most notably, the Congress? Some things may be more complicated than I thought. The other day, I saw Charlie Rose interviewed Michael McConnell, who argued that wiretapping foreigners on American soil is not materially different from bugging by CIA (in foreign land only by law), which is always legal. It strikes me as a reasonable argument. Is this all? If so, how come it is reflected so poorly in the media? Or why would media define it as a wholesale invasion of privacy? Or why that characterization sticked?

Anyway, I am getting the Angler book to find out more.

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