Northern Valley Beacon

The portrait of the Bush administration that appears on the front page of The New York Times today makes George Orwell's Big Brother look downright wimpy.

One story deals with the revelations that the White House had received warnings about how severely Katrina would hit New Orleans and that area of the Gulf Coast days before the hurricane struck land. The White House is refusing to give up papers to a Congressional investigating committee that detail the time-line and nature of the warnings.

Another story deals with the government attempts to require Google to give up its records so that officials can see who is searching for what kind of sites on the Internet. Anyone curious about matters going on in the world might show up as a potential participant in nefarious and depraved activities.

And then the continuing story is spread throughout the news about the Bush's contention that he has the authority to eavesdrop on Americans without getting approval from a special court. The current story is that only telephone calls and e-mails between Americans and people with suspicious indentities would be monitored, but the administration dismisses the Constitutional standard being violated in such actions. Furthermore, records show that the leads produced by the totalitarian wire-tapping proved to be useless for the most part. The administration is trying to make the case that its intentions are focused only outside possible terrorists at the same time it is trying to get records about what kind of web sites American citizens are surfing.

Oh, Big Brother, what a big and long nose you have.