Posted by
on Sunday, August 20, 2006 3:38:31 AM
Are Democrats really so desperate to believe that they will have a political issue that they are hyping this district court decision against the administration's NSA wire tapping program? Surely no one thinks that the decision of the lower court judge will be of any importance when the real decision is made two levels up at the Supreme court level.
The weekend Tribune here in Chicago had a fawning profile of the Carter appointed judge. I wonder if they would have seen fit to profile the septuagenarian if she had ruled for the administration? What was really almost sad was the salivating piece on the possibility of impeachment. This is really a boon to Republicans. That is all that people on the fence want to hear, that the Democrats, if given Congress control will spend their time trying to impeach the President over a program that over 60% of the people agree with, a little statistic that never found its way into any of the pieces on the topic today.
When the President was authorized to go to war against Al Qaeda, to hunt them down and kill them, did the Congress really not think that that would also include tapping their phones? And if it did, did they think that we should exempt phone calls that they make into the US?
I believe the paper said that the NSA's listening program was instrumental in foiling the plot in Britain last week. I believe the paper said that because the paper never mentioned it. If there had been any disconfirming evidence I am sure that it would have been trumpeted with banner headlines. Since it wasn't we can be reasonably sure that the NSA's program was, as reported last week, instrumental in catching out the plot in Britain.
The columnist in the Washington Times does of good job of explaining what is wrong with going to the FISA court in an opinion piece aimed against the administration:
"It's not the most difficult statute to comply with," says Evan Caminker, dean of the University of Michigan Law School, "but they do have to have some reasonable belief that the person may commit a crime." No fishing without a license, you might say.
The fact is we do want fishing without a license. The problem is that we don't know who we are looking for. We may often find the most important information by fishing. Having a computer alert you when there is an odd pattern, a pattern that you would not have known to look for before the patter was brought to your attention, is often the best way to catch terrorist. For instance, a recent investigation seems to have been started because the computers found a conversation between someone in Pakistan and a newly purchased mobile phone mentioning the Brooklyn Bridge a lot.
Evidence that a crime by those individuals was "probable"? Certainly not. Something you would be outraged to hear the police had ignored if the Brooklyn Bridge was subsequently blown up? Certainly. You would be demanding that someone be fired for not "connecting the dots," just as we were after 9/11 when we learned that middle eastern men asking curious questions about the capacity of crop dusters and no interest in leaning how to land the planes they were learning fly were ignored by the FBI and law enforcement.
The point is made for the million th time that the FISA court has only turned down two requests for warrants in 30 years. But the FBI wouldn't even ask for a warrant on Moussai. Getting a warrant that does not reveal a crime has a detrimental effect on ones career. Requesting a warrant that is turned down is worse. The fact that the FISA court seldom turns down a request simply tells us that the court has made clear to the lawyers in the FBI what they will accept and what they won't, and the line is apparently well on this side of Middle-Eastern men who have overstayed their visas failing to think about how to land.
Following the Constitution as contemporary courts have rewritten it means sacrificing the lives of Americans for the privacy of foreigners. Sorry, I don't regard that as a "proportionate" trade.