Michael Hayden: A Bad Choice for CIA Chief on So Many Different Levels

Why wouldn't George Bush decide that Michael Hayden, the man who pushed through warrant-less wiretaps, the great friend to Duck! It's Dick! Cheney, who purposely mistakes the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as CIA Chief?

He's such a bad choice, even several ranking GOP members have been jumping up and down and turning progressive state blue over this choice.

Read what Time has to say about him here.

Then read the exchange that first scared the hell out of me about Hayden a few months ago where he indicates the NSA does NOT follow the U.S. Constitution at Editor and Publisher, snippet here:

Gen. Michael Hayden, expected to be named new director of the CIA, replacing Porter Goss as early as Monday, displayed a shaky awareness of the Fourth Amendment in an appearance at the National Press Club in Washingnon, D.C., on January 23, E&P reported at the time.

Hayden, the former national director of the National Security Agency, was much in the news at the time as a defender of the NSA's domestic spying program. Hayden, now principal deputy director of National Intelligence with the Office of National Intelligence, was NSA director when the NSA monitoring program began in 2001.

As the last journalist to get in a question at the Press Club, Jonathan Landay, a well-regarded investigative reporter for Knight Ridder, noted that Gen. Hayden repeatedly referred to the Fourth Amendment's search standard of "reasonableness" without mentioning that it also demands "probable cause." Hayden seemed to deny that the amendment included any such thing, or simply ignored it. He directly said "no" it did not include "probable cause."

This caused Landay to reply, "The legal standard is probable cause, General."