Why not get the law changed?
One question that’s bugged us about the President’s domestic surveilence program is this: if the law was insufficient for their needs, why not ask Congress for a change in the law?
That question has not been answered, but it has been made _obsolete_. The new question is: if the law was insufficient, why did they “oppose legislation that would have weakened warrant requirements”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012502270.html?
bq. The Bush administration rejected a 2002 Senate proposal that would have made it easier for FBI agents to obtain surveillance warrants in terrorism cases, concluding that the system was working well and that it would likely be unconstitutional to lower the legal standard. The proposed legislation by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) would have allowed the FBI to obtain surveillance warrants for non-U.S. citizens if they had a “reasonable suspicion” they were connected to terrorism — a lower standard than the “probable cause” requirement in the statute that governs the warrants. [ "Washington Post":http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012502270.html ]
Glenn Greenwald has “more on this”:http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/01/administrations-new-fisa-defense-is.html; but still, so much for the “it’s too difficult to follow the law” argument. The Senate tried to pave the way to easier _legal_ eavesdropping, and the President concluded it would be unConstitutional. Now they are claiming the Constitutionality of the wiretaps are self-evident and obvious to anyone. It *would* be very confusing, except we know that this administration is “fundamentally incompetent”:http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_01_22_atrios_archive.html#113825278533659147 — even when it comes to promoting their own interests.
