Gore Versus Bush & Co.

So how did the White House respond to Al Gore's landmark speech? Predictably...

Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan shot back at Gore in a style reminiscent of campaigns past, calling the Democrat who lost to Bush in 2000 a hypocrite and accusing him of grandstanding for media coverage...

McClellan said the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches, and he cited an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants.

"I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds," McClellan said of Gore...

Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, made the same arguments as McClellan during interviews Monday on CNN's "Larry King Live" and Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes."

[As an aside, it's good to see that this Forbes article immediately picks up the Bush team's lie:

But at the time of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed.]

As usual, Team Bush is playing the man, not the ball, attacking the messenger, not the argument. The Raw Story has Gore's response to that:

It is clearly wrong and disrespectful to the American people to allow a close political associate of the president to be in charge of reviewing serious charges against him.

The country needs a full and independent investigation into the facts and legality of the present Administration's program.

In other words, if Bush is a criminal, which he is, then Gonzales is also guilty of criminal negligence (at least) for letting Bush believe he might have been acting lawfully.

Meanwhile, Gore's speech has generated massive enthusiasm in the blogosphere. Here's an interesting post from Daily Kos:

"A great degree of momentum is coalescing...around Al Gore.

There are a lot of good reasons for that. He's the most experienced candidate we could put up and has a record of accomplishment that can't be touched. He was against the Iraq war and stood up and said so when most Dems were scared to utter a peep. He's a big thinker with tremendous foresight on issues like the environment and technology (yes, he did sponsor the Senate legislation that funded the launch of the internet as a public/commercial entity).

Plus, his election would state for all of history that the Bush, Jr. years were rejected by Americans who chose a path back to peace, prosperity and sanity....

Vice President Gore - jump in with both feet. Your country needs you now. And we will have your back."

Gore/Dean in 2008? Sounds OK to me...