Coronation Commence

Bush mouthpiece #1, Bill Kristol argues that the FISA act, which explicitly allows the president to tap American communications if they are believed to be connected with terrorism, doesn't provide enough leniency to listen in on American communications. Here's the reality. The government can legally tap a citizen's communications for 72 hours before getting a warrant, the courts have only rejected four warrants out of thousands over the 27 years FISA has been in effect, and the president still needs to circumvent the process in the name of national security. Let's think here, after 9.11 had the president gone to Congress and requested any sort of reasonable change to FISA, the House and Senate would have been head over heels in granting any sort of "wartime" powers to our commander in chief. Possible explanation for the deception and cover-up from Josh Marshall:

I'm not sure it's data-mining precisely. Perhaps they're doing searches for certain patterns of words or numbers, perhaps something as simple as a phone number. But unlike 'traditional' wiretapping, in which you're catching the conversations of a relatively small and defined group of people, this may involve listening in on a big slice of the email or phone communications in the country looking for a particular phone number or code or perhaps a reference to a particular name.

From a technological point of view there's not really much outlandish about this at all. This is just the sort of thing the NSA is in the business of doing overseas. But you can see how this would just be a non-starter for getting a warrant. It is the definition of a fishing expedition.

When you have the government spying on those Quaker terrorists you know that all isn't well. 9.11 didn't mean that our civil liberties and rights guaranteed in the Constitution must be stolen away in the name of protecting us. A balance must be maintained, but unfortunately for us, the president has brazenly and unilaterally taken it upon himself to determine the appropriate balance, and this what you get, a return to the days of J Edgar Hoover.