Home | Away

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Gonzales explains “electronic surveillance” remarks

Special to Pajamaline Media

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, widely ridiculed for yesterday’s statement that “President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale” than that undertaken by President Bush, explained to the Senate Judiciary Committee today that George Washington’s “time” “machine” allowed him to travel backwards from 1790 to 1777 and reverse the colonists’ almost certain defeat at the hands of the British during the bleakest winter of the Revolutionary War.

Jabbing the air with “quotation” marks each time he uttered the words “time” and “machine,” Gonzales insisted that there was no other explanation for the outcome of the Revolutionary War.

“The Americans were outmanned, underfed, and barely clothed,” Gonzales noted, “and they were fighting one of the most powerful nations in the world.  If not for Washington’s bold decision to bypass FISA and develop his ‘time’ ‘machine,’ we might all be speaking British to this very day.”

Senator Jeff Sessions (R - Alabama) underscored Gonzales’s statement, saying, “I am extremely disturbed by those Democrats and those members of the media who suggest that the father of our country was some kind of criminal, just because he wanted to defeat the enemy.”

Sessions proceeded to ask Gonzales about Abraham Lincoln’s use of electronics, and whether Lincoln might have used illegal methods in the conduct of “the war of Northern aggression.”

Gonzales replied that Lincoln had, indeed, ignored FISA during the Civil War.  “Thanks to the development of his ‘laser’ in late 1863,” Gonzales said, once again making broad, exaggerated “quotation” gestures with his hands, “Lincoln was able to overcome the South’s early military victories and win the war.  You don’t think William T. Sherman caused all that destruction by himself, do you?” Gonzales proceeded to explain that Lincoln’s laser was the result of a special project undertaken by Secretary of War Alan Parsons, and that its secret code name during the war was, accordingly, “the Alan Parsons Project.”

Injecting a moment of drama into the proceedings, Lindsey Graham (R - South Carolina) suddenly ran from the chamber in tears, vowing “revenge” against General Sherman and “laser-toting Yankees everywhere.”

When the committee returned to business, Russ Feingold (D - Wisconsin) interrogated Gonzales repeatedly about Lincoln’s laser, suggesting that “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation” was not invented until 1958, when Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes published the paper “Infrared and Optical Masers” in the journal Physical Review. 

“That much is true,” said Gonzales.  “But thanks to President Eisenhower’s wise decision to use Washington’s ‘time’ ‘machine’ in 1959, he was able to skirt messy, bureaucratic Congressional oversight in order to deliver the ‘laser’ to Abraham Lincoln just in the nick of time.  And that’s the kind of crisp, time-travelling decision-making power the President needs today.”

Pajamaline Media extra: The Editors have the graphics.

Posted by Michael on 02/07 at 01:03 PM
(17) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages