So I guess we can all sit back now

You know all that fretting and worrying we did about the Shrub gang's wiretapping and tracking and how we were all "oh that's illegal, oh that violates civil liberties" and stuff? A waste of time! Totally unnecessary! Boy, we were lefties silly. Or so we learn from AP today:

A White House privacy board is giving its stamp of approval to two of the Bush administration's controversial surveillance programs — electronic eavesdropping and financial tracking — and says they do not violate citizens' civil liberties. ...

The report finds that both the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program and the Treasury Department's monitoring of international banking transactions have sufficient privacy protections, three board members told The Associated Press in telephone interviews. ...

"We looked at the program, we visited NSA and met with the top people all the way down to those doing the hands-on work," said Carol Dinkins, a Houston lawyer and former Reagan administration assistant attorney general who chairs the board.

"The program is structured and implemented in a way that is properly protective and attentive to civil liberties," she said.

I feel so much better. In fact, I feel so much better that I'm not even disturbed by the facts that

- the board, which operated in secret, is part of the executive office - not just the executive branch, the executive office.
- one member said most of the work consisted of being briefed on the surveillance programs - that is, being briefed by the very people being investigated.
- the board does not have subpoena power.
- the White House can change its annual reports before they go to Congress.
- the recommendations are just that; Gonzales decides if they will be followed.
- the members serve at the pleasure of Bush and fear they could "alienate" him if they took an adversarial role.
- Dinkins, a longtime friend of the Bush family, was treasurer of Bush's first campaign for governor of Texas and is a longtime partner in the law firm of Vinson & Elkins, where Gonzales was once a partner.

But I'm just so relieved that I'll ignore all that. After all, raising any questions about the power or impartiality or independence of the board would be nothing more than the kind of paranoid, Bush-hating, nit-picking in which the loony left always engages.