Reply #112: MOTHER JONES: Let the Warrantless Wiretapping Resume

[L. Coyote]

Let the Warrantless Wiretapping Resume
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/08/5097_let_the_warantl.html


It's official: The Protect America Act is on it's way to the president's desk and, once it arrives, you can be sure it will be signed .... Troubling to civil libertarians and the House Democrats who voted against the legislation, is the wording in the bill, which seems just vague enough that U.S. citizens and domestic communications could still be swept up in the surveillance net, which was the whole problem with the first incarnation of the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. According to the bill, electronic intercepts involving people "reasonably believed to be outside the United States" are fair game. ....

Another question that's worth asking is why the Democratic leadership—Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in particular—allowed their caucus to be rushed into action on this bill, bowing to pressure from the White House and congressional Republicans, who have been agitating for a FISA fix.

As recently as three weeks ago, it was my understanding that the Democrats were going to take up FISA in the fall, after Congress returned from the August recess. Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said as much during a hearing I attended in late July that explored the implications of the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Al Qaeda. After the committee's ranking member Pete Hoekstra spent the better part of his opening statement lambasting the Democrats for their inaction on FISA ....

In the end, however, careful consideration went out the window and Reyes and his Democratic colleagues were indeed stampeded into action on a bill that Nancy Pelosi said yesterday “does violence to the Constitution.” .... Adding to the pressures they felt ... the disclosure by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) of a secret court ruling earlier this year that complicated the wiretapping of purely foreign communications that happen to pass through a communications node on U.S. soil.

Now, the Democrats can rest easily over the August recess, knowing that they haven’t left themselves vulnerable to political attacks. The rest of us can worry about whether the NSA is using its enhanced surveillance authority to spy on Americans.