My review on James Risen’s A State of War is now online at American Conservative.
The spying scandal continues to show Washington at its best. Yesterday, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed to support a legislative reform to the FISA law to legalize Bush’s actions.
One key change: Feds would be allowed to wiretap Americans’ phones and intercept their email for up to 45 days without a warrant. Federal law currently only permits 3 days of warrantless wiretaps.
Sen. Olympia Snow (R-Maine) bragged of the “FISA fix” deal: “”We are reasserting Congressional responsibility and oversight.”Apparently, since the Senate is not proposing to formally nullify the Fourth Amendment, Americans should hail this deal as a victory for liberty.
This NSA spying thing is like a bad comedy. Just when you think it couldn’t get much worse, they take it to another level.
Glenn Greenwald hits the nail on the head with his analysis of the compromise between Republican senators and the White House:
“[w]hat the legislation does, on its face, is replace FISA judges with Republican Senators in approving the government’s eavesdropping activities.”
The old fox and the henhouse analogy seems appropriate.
Good times!
Kevin – Thanks for the comments. Greenwald is doing great stuff dogging this scandal.
My biggest fear is that the warrantless wiretaps may result in more public cynicism, the biggest threat to democracy.