Russ McBee

The Dems in Congress caved to the White House's bullying and enshrined warrantless, blanket surveillance into American law:

The Democratic-controlled House last night approved and sent to President Bush for his signature legislation written by his intelligence advisers to enhance their ability to intercept the electronic communications of foreigners without a court order.

[...]

The bill would give the National Security Agency the right to collect such communications in the future without a warrant. But it goes further than that: It also would allow the interception and recording of electronic communications involving, at least in part, people "reasonably believed to be outside the United States" without a court's order or oversight.

Why is this administration so afraid of our judiciary's Constitutionally mandated oversight role? The FISA law already allowed the intelligence agencies to eavesdrop with oversight by a secret court, and it even allowed eavesdropping to begin without a warrant, as long as the situation was an emergency and a warrant was sought within a couple of days. Now, even that shadow protection is gone. There is no valid justification for this except as a power grab by an insane Executive.

Here's the new substitute for court-approved warrants:

In place of a court's approval -- which intelligence officials worried might come too slowly -- the NSA would institute a system of internal bureaucratic controls.

Is any thinking person in this country really stupid enough to trust the NSA to police itself? The new law claims that it would prohibit warrantless surveillance of people who aren't under suspicion. We're supposed to trust the intelligence agencies and the attorney general that this power won't be abused.

Got that? We're supposed to trust Alberto Gonzales.

Yeah, right:

Under the administration's version of the bill, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general can authorize the surveillance of all communications involving foreign targets. Oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, composed of federal judges whose deliberations are secret, would be limited to examining whether the government's guidelines for targeting overseas suspects are appropriate. The court would not authorize the surveillance.

So, the court has been limited to overseeing the broad policy employed, and not the specifics of individual cases. The Dems who caved to Bush's bullying are going to pay for this in the next election.

Today's Washington Post editorial says it quite well:

In the final hours before recess, it was hard to know which was more shameful: the administration's use of the looming vacation to bully Democrats into accepting its overbroad rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or Democrats' spinelessness in caving to this strong-arming.