I think your concerns are not only premature but not based on reasonably foreseeable scenarios. The Courts and Congress can deal with abuses. The Courts, however, are singularly inept at managing domestic electronic intelligence gathering, which is what the present statute essentially requires them to do.
We don't have strong evidence the present system has failed, only the public statements of administration members who believe presidential authority in this area has no limits and should have no limits. I can't accept that.
We also have indirect evidence that some members of the FISA court were unconvinced by the Bush administration. They resigned.
We also have some evidence that members of the Bush DOJ were unconvinced--witness the refusal of Comry (sp?) to sign the authorization and Gonzales, we are told, having to go to Ashcroft's sick bed to get it, though we are not, definitively, best I can recall, told he signed off on it.
That suggests that some folk who favor limitations on presidential powers and who were involved in the decisions, don't agree with giving the president "unsupervised" (I'm coming to love Will's phrase) powers.
I don't think the terror threat has been exaggerated, as you suggest.
I don't recall suggesting that it has been exaggerated. I, actually, have no way of knowing. What I do recall saying is that the Bush administration has used, brilliantly, the "terrorist" threat for political leverage. It's reasonably clear they invoke it when they need to gain leverage.
There is no way to evaluate whether there is real threat, at those times. Just a very, very suspicious pattern. |
