Will Bush evade accountability on surveillance by using his Softwood Lumber Agreement slush fund?

Josh Meyer of the LA Times has a story up today that shows how the criminal (30 felonies) Bush regime’s surveillance really is worse than anybody, except Corrente, ever imagined. (And we’ll get to the Softwood Lumber Agreement, I promise.)

Now we know why the NSA is running out of electrical power.

And the surveillance really is domestic, and targets Americans. (as we said back in May).

They’re breaking into your home:

FBI agents are also using what are known as “sneak and peek” warrants on a wider scale, entering hundreds of homes clandestinely to gather intelligence and copy files and computer drives, again without notification. And they have conducted surveillance on antiwar, religious, civil rights and environmental groups, including Greenpeace and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

They’re tracking your politics:

Authorities and private data brokers now have easy access to a digitized footprint of their activities and interests. Phone records, political preferences and purchasing habits are now only mouse clicks away from government agents.

They’re even surveilling your Blackberry. (We’ll get to the Softwood Lumber Agreement!)

The programs comprise actual surveillance of Americans’ activities and communications, and “dataveillance,” the practice of mining the vast amounts of personal data compiled on Americans.

The NSA has improved its ability to monitor the entire spectrum of communications, including fiber-optic and wireless transmissions, instant messages, BlackBerry e-mails and voice conversations sent over the Internet, officials and experts say.

Blackberrys? Tremble, Beltway elite! Because Rove’s opposition research can get everything.

And the scope of surveillance is vast, much larger than the warrantless surveillance we already know about. In fact, some of it only Bush and a few “advisers” know about:

[Some programs] are operating without the knowledge or approval of judicial and legislative overseers, officials and experts say.

Privacy experts and even some ranking lawmakers in Congress say their efforts to learn about other suspected surveillance efforts have been blocked.

They believe that some of the activity is so secret that none but a small circle of top administration officials [Karl Rove] and operational support personnel know about it [For example?] — though notification of congressional leaders is legally required.

Hmmm… Could that be the politically explosive surveillance? Ratfucking? It would be irresponsible not to speculate—and since the Bush administration has politicized everything else, it would be highly uncharacteristic of them not to have politicized domestic intelligence gathering, illegally.

And the Softwood Lumber Agreement part of the story? Here it comes…

The Bush administration is stonewalling:

“The White House simply refuses to be straight with us about what they’re up to,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who says he has pressed unsuccessfully for answers as a member of the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, which entitles him to classified briefings on the subject.

Strong stuff from Wyden. And it gets stronger:

“My sense today is that there is a staggering amount of personal information being collected on millions of Americans,” Wyden said. “And how it’s accessed and how it’s used is at best unclear. What is certain is that there is no real accountability to ensure that a balance is struck between fighting terrorism and protecting privacy.”

It’s good to see Wyden taking advantage of the “accountability” meme in MyDD’s strategy memo.

So, what would Bush’s response to Wyden’s threat to hold him accountable be?

I’d guess the first thing that would come to Bush’s mind would be bribery. And now we are at the Softwood Lumber Agreement part of the story:

Here is a map of softwood sawmills from from the United States Forest Service:

The presence of softwood sawmills is an excellent proxy for where there are softwood lumber revenues, softwood lumber jobs—and softwood lumber constituents and campaign contributions.

You will note the very high concentration of softwood lumber mills in Oregon: Ron Wyden’s state, where Bush is destroying national forests to fund rural roads and schools.

And you will remember that Bush has a $450 million slush fund available for “meritorious initiatives” in the softwood lumber industry, and that the list of beneficiaries remains mysteriously un-announced (though, by the text of the agreement, the list was to be determined September 1). Has the list not been announced because the bribes agreements between the Bush administration and our elected represenatives have not yet been not finalized? (We won’t use the word “bag men” but feel free to think it!)

While I have no difficulty believing that the increasingly desperate Bush would pay anybody anything to maintain his grip on power, I have more difficulty believing that Ron Wyden, a Democrat, would trash the Fourth Amendment, sell out the Constitution, and enable Republican authoritarian rule, all for a few pieces of silver from a Bush slush fund. Surely, at this point, the Beltway Dems know it’s not business as usual.

But I’d really like to be completely sure…

NOTE Wyden’s been one of the good guys on Iraq, and on net neutrality, but wavered on Social Security, and he’s in the tank on Gitmo. And Oregon may be getting stained with red.

UPDATE Welcome, Daou Report readers. Here’s the original post that describes the Softwood Lumber Agreement, and shows how the slush fund works. Here are all the other SLA posts. Enjoy!

UPDATE Trade rep Susan Scwhab in Ottawa tomorrow!