California Conservative

That’s what the debate will be about when they take up FISA reform. Here’s how David Rivkin and Lee Casey frame the debate in their WSJ op-ed. In my opinion, they’ve framed it perfectly.

Would any sane country purposefully limit its ability to spy on enemy communications in time of war? That is the question Congress must answer as it takes up reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Privacy activists, civil libertarians and congressional Democrats argue that both foreign and domestic eavesdropping must be subject to judicial scrutiny and oversight, even if this means drastically reducing the amount of foreign intelligence information available to the government, without ever acknowledging the costs involved. It is time the American people had an open and honest debate on the relative importance of privacy and security.

One of the sentences in that paragraph that I disagree with is when they say “It is time the American people had an open and honest debate on the relative importance of privacy and security.” It isn’t that it isn’t important to have such a debate. It’s that we’ve already had that debate. As usual, we’re waiting for the Democratic leadership, indeed all of Washington, to catch up. In poll after poll, the American people have overwhelmingly supported the NSA’s intercept program, which is what we’re really talking about here.

When this legislation was first debated, Democrats caved because they didn’t want to be blamed for terrorists’ communications reaching their destination without us listening in:

The measure would authorize the National Security Agency to intercept without a court order communications between people in the United States and foreign targets overseas.

The real debate is in the Democratic Party. In fact, it isn’t a debate as much as it is a all-out food fight. Here’s what MoveOn.org said: (more…)