The Pervasive Al Gore

On Monday, Al Gore gave his annual speech to the anti-Bush organization, MoveOn. In a widely quoted soundbite he said,

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

When I first saw this I thought that the former Veep must have used the wrong word. "Pervasive" means everywhere. In a country of 300 million, even tens of thousands of wiretaps are miniscule. Surely Gore meant "intrusive".

A look at the rest of the speech shows that Gore probably meant pervasive. This means that he probably had advance notice of two lawsuits filed to stop the wiretapping. These also asserted that the wiretaps were pervasive.

All of this is part of a major offensive being aimed at the Bush administration. Pundit after pundit is coming out insisting that Bush is the biggest danger to the constitution in history. Syndicated columnist Jonathan Alter says it. Hillary Clinton jumped on the bandwagon, insisting that Democrats in Congress are treated like "a plantation". Presumable she is saying that the Republicans are treating her like a slave. No wonder the Republicans complain that she it over the top.

In fact the whole attack is over the top.

More on this on my next post.