Congress, Do No Harm
With the Senate about to debate the FISA bill, the first caution I’d offer President Bush and Congress is to do no harm to our intel-gathering capabilities. The WSJ has stated the same thing in this editorial. that isn’t the only advice they’re giving Congress. Here’s something else they said that I’ve written about before:
He’s also acceded to a provision in the Senate Intelligence bill that is troublesome enough. That’s Oregon Senator Ron Wyden’s amendment requiring the FISA court to approve all overseas surveillance of U.S. citizens. This would go beyond current law, which allows eavesdropping of Americans abroad if the Attorney General makes a finding of “probable cause” of some criminal act. The Wyden provision would transfer that “probable cause” judgment to unelected judges, which means that Americans abroad who are suspected of aiding terrorists would get more wiretap judicial review than do Americans suspected of drug offenses.
As I said here, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to reasonable searches. It’s only applicable to unreasonable searches. For those who say that we have a system of checks and balances, I’d suggest that Congress, not FISA judges, should be the check to the White House.
This paragraph sums up my views perfectly:
Which brings us to the larger problem with this entire exercise. Congress’s overriding goal here is to further hamstring our intelligence war-fighters with legal rigidity and complexity, but to do so in a way that dodges its own oversight duties by passing the buck to FISA judges. White House lawyers know this is unconstitutional, but intelligence officials say it’s more important to have Congress’s blessing for these wiretaps. And because the telecom companies won’t cooperate without immunity, Mr. Bush is being bullied into trading away some of his own power to get that immunity.
Mr. Bush would do better by future Presidents if he opposed the Wyden amendment, and any further concessions would amount to an abdication as Commander in Chief. He has the political high ground on this issue. If Congress does more harm, he should declare that to protect the country he’ll use his Constitutional war powers to wiretap al Qaeda anyway and toss the issue squarely in the middle of the Presidential campaign.
I couldn’t think of a better way of highlighting the differences between Republicans’ and Democrats’ perspective on national security. When the NY Times broke the NSA article, they conducted a poll on how people felt about warrantless intercepts. The poll showed that 70+ percent of respondents didn’t have a problem with it. Republicans should rejoice anytime that the Democrats want to take the 30 side of a 70-30 issue. That’s especially true when the issue is national security.
If it’s the Democrats’ intent to hamstring our intel-gathering abilities, the new media should make certain that it’s done in the bright sunlight of our scrutiny.
Technorati Tags: Senate, FISA, Fourth Amendment, Intelligence, President Bush, Ron Wyden, Arlen Specter, Legal Precedent, National Security, NSA, al-Qaeda, Election 2008
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog