Negroponte denied domestic spying

Seems Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte said last week that the government was "absolutely not" engaged in warrantless "domestic spying". (Oops.)

Which means that he was either ignorant or lying. I suspect the latter.

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Here's Fred Kaplan at Slate: "We have hit the point where paranoia is a proper frame of mind for assessing nearly everything this administration says or does."

Read the whole piece, but here's Kaplan's take on the NSA program: "[H]ere's the crucial issue: The executive branch of the government cannot be trusted with sole access to such massive and intrusive information. This has nothing to do with who the president is; it has everything to do with the nature of power. To dispute this fact is to dispute the need for checks and balances; it's to dismiss the constitutional premise of the U.S. government."

And here's a bit more: "This dispute is not over some legal fine point; it has all the makings of a constitutional crisis. Even on a less vaunted level, we are in the alarming predicament of facing a president who -- at least on this issue -- possesses absolute power. Bush and Gonzales may say they won't use the NSA data improperly. But there is nobody who can verify that claim."

Come on, do you trust the Bush Administration?