EDITORIAL: A good deal on FISA

This is a cowardly defense of legislation which aims to to end judicial inquiry into the largest illegal warantless domestic surveillance program in United States history. Significantly, it does so by granting ex post facto immunity to the private companies that aided and abetted the Government in this gross breach of the the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. Even if many provisions of the FISA bill were necessary, the Editorial's defense of the retroactive immunity clause is laughable. If the most important provision of the bill was not the sections that updated FISA courts to make them more effective, or the sections that updated the manner in which wiretaps are conducted to increase efficiency, but instead the provision which blocks judicial action into discovering the extent to which the laws of this country were butchered and raped and holding those complicit accountable, then we know where the writer's priorities lie. The possible legacy of this legislation is chilling: Must a private citizen comply with the President's every request, immediately and secretly, to aid in illegal and morally abhorrent programs of any type? The writer might very well feel that it is his "patriotic duty" to break as many laws and democratic principles as possible in servitude to every illegal request of his Presidential Master, but this American and all other Americans with an interest in preserving the bounty of comprehensive civil liberties and true freedom for their children feel otherwise. Let's not let this Writer spin and lie about what the President's domestic surveillance program really was: a half-decade of complete, total, warantless access to every single type of communication across at least AT&T's network. Not just phone calls and faxes, but every single bit of internet transmission. Not just between America and abroad, but also between two Americans in America. Not even just communication, but complete unfettered access to both the communication logs and client records of every single one of the millions of AT&T's private, law-abiding American customers. President Bush and his Republicans have been exploiting Americans' fear of terrorist attack to destroy the constitutional principles of this country for too many years. Its time for the Senate Democrats to stand up to the fearmongering, knowing full well that the American public is tired of being lied to and tired of taking the cowards way out by sacrificing so many great freedoms that Americans sacrificed their lives to build and preserve. President Bush and the writer of this editorial, if the terrorists hate our freedom then you're certainly doing a good job helping them win. If the prospect we're fighting against is a terrorist attack that can only be prevented by the complete and total surveillance of the private business of the American people, then I for one would rather die in that attack then have my children grow up in a totalitarian police state.

Congress did the right thing with this legislation. I am a centrist Democrat, and I think MoveOn.org is wrong on this issue. I'm sorry that more Democrats voted against it than for it. Don't get me wrong; I still think that the Joe Libermanns of our party have ceased to be Americans and morphed into Israeli agents. But for those of us who are capable of distinguishing between a threat to the US versus a threat only to Israel, yes, I agree we must deal ruthlessly with those who would harm the US, and this legislation will allow the US military and Justice Dept to do so. What is REALLY needed is something to rein-in the CIA so that only military personnel with kill/capture authority or US Marshalls with arrest authority can operate against people. But against electronic signals from people, it's reasonable to utilize as much information as possible and as is legally prudent.