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I’ve been thinking about James Bamford comparing the Bush Administration’s call for the dismissal of the wiretapping suit with that of a bank robber claiming he shouldn’t be prosecuted for past crimes because he’s stopped robbing banks… for now.  (See two posts down.)

Robbing banks is a pretty good analogy, but not as good as drunk driving.  Why?   Robbing a bank implies that some sort of weapon or the threat of using a weapon was used to force a victim to relinquish something valuable that the robber wants—usually money.  There are usually eyewitnesses to a bank robbery, and there’s almost always some physical evidence that can be used to prosecute the robber long after he thinks he got away with the crime.  Plus the victim of the crime usually wants to recover the stolen goods.  Warrantless wiretapping is surreptitious.  It doesn’t leave much of a physical trail.  Victims most often don’t even know their rights have been violated.

Which brings me to drunk driving.  If they person driving near you is drunk and you don’t know it, well what’s the problem?  If you don’t perceive him or her to be doing something that endangers you, why worry?  And, like warrantless wiretapping, drunk driving is difficult to prosecute unless the perpetrator is caught in the act or is found to be intoxicated at the scene of a car accident. 

If someone drives drunk and nobody catches him, then it’s true that he can’t be prosecuted for his past crimes.  He can say “I don’t drive drunk anymore, and even if you know I did, you can’t prosecute me for what you might have heard that I did.  You don’t have any evidence and besides, nobody was hurt.”  True… And, as in the wiretapping case, there’s nothing stopping a drunk from getting a good buzz on and hitting the road.  Nothing but the fear of being caught and being held responsible for his actions.  Oh, and drunk driving is something that Bush and Cheney can both relate to.

So what I’m getting at here is that maybe… just maybe… Gonzales came up with his wacky dismissal argument because he’s spent so much time hanging around with former drunks.  They are used to getting away with what they perceive to be maybe not quite on the up-and-up, but basically harmless since they didn’t hurt anyone and they’re not doing that sort of thing anymore anyway.

It’s kind of like how Bush and his boys stopped sidestepping the FISA Court shortly after the Democrats took power because they perceived there to be a new sheriff in town—one that might want to watch them more closely, catch them in the act, and then throw them in the slammer.  So they say “Hey? What’s the big deal you guys?  We told you we’re not doing that anymore.  We are law abiding public officials now.  You should leave us alone and go on about your business of raising the minimum wage, solving the healthcare crisis, stopping the war or whatever.  We won’t be tapping phones again… for a while anyway. (wink, wink.)”

But we know they can’t stop themselves.  All it takes for a drunk to get behind the wheel again is a good party, a bottle of whisky, and a car.  All it will take for Bush to start his illegal surveillance program again is a good scare, a fearful public, and a submissive congress.