Orwellian Dick

By Michael J.W. Stickings

WaPo:

Vice President Cheney told Justice Department officials that he disagreed with their objections to a secret surveillance program during a high-level White House meeting in March 2004, a former senior Justice official told senators yesterday.

The meeting came one day before White House officials tried to get approval for the same program from then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who lay recovering from surgery in a hospital, according to former deputy attorney general James B. Comey.

Comey's disclosures, made in response to written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, indicate that Cheney and his aides were more closely involved than previously known in a fierce internal battle over the legality of the warrantless surveillance program. The program allowed the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and e-mails between the United States and overseas.

Comey said that Cheney's office later blocked the promotion of a senior Justice Department lawyer, Patrick Philbin, because of his role in raising concerns about the surveillance.

Okay, let's summarize:

1) Cheney (and his people) not only supported the (illegal) domestic surveillance program but actively advocated for it even against Justice Department objections. (Tyranny)

2) Cheney punished one of those at the Justice Department who raised concerns about the (illegal) domestic surveillance program. (Thuggery)

What a lovely human being.