http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/03/post-mortem-on-intelligence-committee.htmlGlenn Greenwald's Post-mortem on the Intelligence Committee vote. Long and well worth reading as usual.
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What the legislation does, on its face, is replace FISA judges with Republican Senators in approving the government's eavesdropping activities. Whereas the country agreed to a framework 30 years ago which allowed the government to eavesdrop on Americans only if the Government persuaded a FISA judge that such eavesdropping was warranted, this proposed legislation eliminates that requirement and allows warrantless eavesdropping as long as 4 Republican Senators agree with the White House that such actions are warranted.
But there is a far bigger and more important problem. Congress already enacted legislation regulating the Government's eavesdropping activities. They called that law FISA. The Administration has been violating that law because they believe they have the power to do so, because they think that Congress has no power to regulate or limit the President's eavesdropping activities. Since the White House still believes it has this power, isn't passing another law facially moronic, given that the Administration has already said that they are free to violate whatever Congressional laws they want which purport to regulate eavesdropping?
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The Administration has told Congress to its face that it has the power to ignore Congressional laws with regard to eavesdropping and that it is free to defy Congressional law mandating briefings on these types of intelligence activities. So, Congress' response is to pass another law to replace the one the White House violated, and to require some more briefing. Isn't that too absurd even for the Congress? At the very least, would it be possible for the media to explain to the public what has happened here?
(4) The issue which is left unresolved by all of these Congressional shenanigans is the issue that lies at the core of this scandal and several others: namely, we are a country in which the President has seized the power to break the law.
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