Way, way back in February we said that the only way the numbers made sense was if Bush’s illegal warrantless domestic surveillance was all about ratfucking.

Well, it is. Via Josh, this from McClatchy:

In a policy reversal, President Bush has agreed to sign legislation allowing a secret federal court to assess the constitutionality of his warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, a senior Republican senator announced Thursday.

By having the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court conduct the review instead of a regular federal court, the Bush administration would ensure the secrecy of details of the highly classified program. The administration has argued that making details of the program public would compromise national security.

McClatchy’s (non-Beltway) continues in paragraph three:

However, such details could include politically explosive disclosures that the government has kept tabs on people it shouldn’t have been monitoring.

Hmmm… Oddly, or not, AP’s coverage doesn’t mention any of this.) Does that sound like ratfucking to you?

Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the Republicans keep saying that all Democrats and most journalists are traitors.

So why not assume they mean what they say?

And if the Republicans believe that half the Beltway is committing treason, it’s not optional to wiretap them—it’s a bounden duty.

So of course they’re surveilling inside the Beltway, as many people as they can, and of course they’re using the data any way they want. Outing Plame, blackmail, you name it.

UPDATE Pravda on the Potomac’s deeply bogus coverage of this “compromise” that Bush is free to ignore when he likes mentions nothing of politically explosive disclosures. I wonder why?

UPDATE To be fair—foily but fair is our motto, at The Mighty Corrente Building—The Man in the Grey Turtleneck highlights that word “could”. But surely even the sloppiest editor reads to the third graf?

[See the links below for complete Corrente coverage of this issue.]