Analysis: Bush Powers Reach Cash Tracking

Where is this KGB Crap going to stop?

Guardian Unlimited World Latest Analysis: Bush Powers Reach Cash Tracking:

"Polls show that Americans generally accept some erosion of civil liberties if they think it makes them safer from the possibility of terrorist attacks.

Still, Bush's war on terrorism is an open-ended one. Constitutional scholars suggest there are limits.

At some point, the Constitution can't bear the kind of continued strains that are being imposed by the demands of the fight on terrorism,'' said Harold J. Krent, dean and professor of law at Kent College of Law in Chicago.,

What I am worried about is that there is a potential for amassing huge databases of individuals - linked by phone records, linked by financial records - that can be kept and used without any kind of real oversight. It's frightening,'' Krent said.

Many in both parties point to Cheney as the engine behind Bush's power plays.

At a Republican luncheon in Chicago on Friday, Cheney defended the financial-data tracking and earlier surveillance programs as ``good, solid, sound programs'' and castigated the news media for disclosing them.

When Cheney in the 1970s was chief of staff to then-President Ford, he saw presidential authority at a low point, eroded by the unpopular Vietnam War and the Watergate scandals. The balance of power was still tilted in favor of Congress when he and Bush took office in January 2001, Cheney contends. "