It's Official: We Have a Gate!
Keep it secret, keep it safe

Thanks to Jonathan Alter at Newsweek:

Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

[...]

What is especially perplexing about this story is that the 1978 law set up a special court to approve eavesdropping in hours, even minutes, if necessary. In fact, the law allows the government to eavesdrop on its own, then retroactively justify it to the court, essentially obtaining a warrant after the fact. Since 1979, the FISA court has approved tens of thousands of eavesdropping requests and rejected only four. There was no indication the existing system was slow—as the president seemed to claim in his press conference—or in any way required extra-constitutional action.

And speaking of the need for speed, former Senator Bob Graham of Florida has a few questions for the BushCo adminstration (from an appearance on MSNBC, link via Daily Dissent):

1) What are the problems with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act?

2) If they identified those problems, why didn't they go to the Congress and ask that they be corrected? In the aftermath of 9/11, Congress would have done almost anything the administration suggested.

3) Of the cases that have been made based on these warrantless intercepts, would they also have been made if they followed the legal procedures -- has in fact this process of avoiding the law made us safer?