The Unsinkable Molly Ivins.

Well, she's back in the Tribune this morning (reprinted here). She's still on the surveillance 'story,' and now she is suggesting that the President needs to be impeached.

First, she invokes Nixon's misdeeds. (When will the left ever leave the Vietnam era?) It would be nice if she actually did some journalism work, and looked at the similarities and differences between Nixon's wiretapping and Bush's. But no, she paints with a broad brush: Omigosh, some people from Nixon's administration are in the current administration. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! The closest she comes to any analysis of the similarities is this:

Of course, they tell us we have to be spied on for our own safety, so they can
catch the terrorists who threaten us all. Thirty-five years ago, they nabbed a
film star named Jean Seberg and a bunch of people running a free breakfast
program for poor kids in Chicago. This time, they're onto the Quakers. We are
not safer.

I think what is glaring in Molly's latest column is the omission. You will recall in her recent column she discussed the Quakers and her assertion that a college kid was spied on for checking out Mao's "Little Red Book." Our friend David has shown that story to be categorically false. Hmm, funny that in her latest column she just drops the Mao story without comment. She doesn't say, "Oh, by the way, in my rush to create hysteria in order for my party to gain political power I used fabricated facts the last time I discussed this issue." Nope, just drops it. Maybe the Quaker story is false too? We sure couldn't trust Molly to tell us, could we?

But what really bothers me about Molly's piece, and the left's response to the surveillance issue, is the inherently dishonest and disingenuous nature of much of their argument. They paint the administration as spying on "Americans." There is no reasoned analysis, or reporting, of just who the targets of this surveillance might be. There are Americans in this country with links to terrorist groups. These are the people who are spied on, not granny down at the bingo hall. Might granny occasionally get swept in into the net? Yes. Is that a reason to stop seeking human intelligence? I don't think so.

And Molly, like the Tribune, ignores the use of similar techniques by past, Democrat presidents. Ask yourself why she goes back to Nixon, but ignores Clinton and Carter.