KING GEORGE

Attention all ye peoples of the United States. King George Bush II demands your immediate compliance. It has come to his attention there are rumblings of discontent, within his immediate empire. I remind you it is HE who commands America and it is HE who controls the National Security Agency. It is HE, not the people, who will decide the American Empire's course of action.

Dec. 18, 2005 — Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., believes President Bush is acting more like a sovereign monarch than an elected leader by authorizing the National Security Agency to listen in on Americans' phone calls. "We have a system of law," Feingold said. "He just can't make up the law … It would turn George Bush not into President George Bush, but King George Bush."

In a televised radio address Saturday, Bush said he has reauthorized the NSA's new powers over 30 times since 9/11, and "intend(s) to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups." The president, and members of his staff including Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and White House counsel Harriet Miers, reevaluate the spying every 45 days.

Bush said the surveillance helps catch terrorists and is within the scope of his Constitutional powers.

Since the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration, the executive branch's power has been significantly restrained, Bush administration officials say. It has been the mission of White House officials such as Vice President Dick Cheney to reassert executive power.

Feingold, the only senator who initially opposed the Patriot Act, which was designed to protect Americans from terrorism, said that the spying is indicative of a "pattern of abuse" including torture and secret prisons. The president, Feingold said is "grabbing too much power."