The Moderate Voice - New, Troubling Questions Over Bush Domestic Spying

The Moderate Voice - New, Troubling Questions Over Bush Domestic Spying: "by Joe Gandelman

Newsweek adds a new troubling twist to the controversy over the Bush administration's warrantless spying. It reports that even then-Attorney General John Ashcroft would not authorize the spying sought by the administration:

On one day in the spring of 2004, White House chief of staff Andy Card and the then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a bedside visit to John Ashcroft, attorney general at the time, who was stricken with a rare and painful pancreatic disease, to try—without success—to get him to reverse his deputy, Acting Attorney General James Comey, who was balking at the warrantless eavesdropping. Miffed that Comey, a straitlaced, by-the-book former U.S. attorney from New York, was not a 'team player' on this and other issues, President George W. Bush dubbed him with a derisive nickname, 'Cuomo,' after Mario Cuomo, the New York governor who vacillated over running for president in the 1980s. (The White House denies this; Comey declined to comment.)

There's a few things troubling in this paragraph from a piece that tries to present both sides (see below): (1) Because Comey wouldn't go along with the President's desires he was basically labeled by the President a Democrat within his heart. So, if you don't agree with everything the President says you MUST be a closet Democrat? (2) It's clear it was no dice when the Bush administration went to James Comey so the administration tried to end-run him and go higher up. (3) When even its ATTORNEY GENERAL REFUSED, the administration then did what what it sought to do anyway...without going to a court.

If this was so justified in doing as warrantless wiretaps, then, why did they bother to go to Comey or Ashcroft in the first place?" ...