Securing the Homeland: From Whom and For What?
Yesterday I pointed out what the GOP-dominated Congress considered important enough to deal with between now and the elections (here). Immigration fizzled out as an issue, and nobody really wants to talk about Iraq at this point. Security will be the focus. From the Washington Post:
Deepening Republican divisions over the future of President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program may jeopardize GOP leaders' hopes of making terrorism surveillance legislation a centerpiece of their final legislative push this month.
House and Senate Republican leaders plan to focus congressional attention almost exclusively on national security, hoping to draw clear distinctions between Republicans and Democrats ahead of the November elections. Topping the to-do list is passing legislation officially sanctioning the National Security Agency's secret wiretapping of suspected terrorist communications. The eavesdropping has been carried out without warrants since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A federal judge in Detroit recently ruled the program illegal.
...The Senate Judiciary Committee will consider as many as four contradictory bills on the issue tomorrow and could approve all of them. That would leave it to Senate leaders and the White House to sort out how to proceed. [Emphasis added]
From what I can tell the four bills are contradictory only in the details. All four allow warrantless tapping and differ only in how long it can go on (45 days, 60 days) before Congress gets to be informed about it. All four are intended to retroactively approve the warrantless spying that has gone on under this regime. All four are intended to gut judicial review of the warrantless spying. In other words, Americans can kiss the First and Fourth Amendments good-bye.
The last paragraph of the story makes that clear:
The American Civil Liberties Union and top Democrats have said Wilson's and Specter's bills would gut judicial review of executive surveillance, creating so many loopholes that court warrants would become optional. [Emphasis added]
Democracy on the march, indeed.
Deepening Republican divisions over the future of President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program may jeopardize GOP leaders' hopes of making terrorism surveillance legislation a centerpiece of their final legislative push this month.
House and Senate Republican leaders plan to focus congressional attention almost exclusively on national security, hoping to draw clear distinctions between Republicans and Democrats ahead of the November elections. Topping the to-do list is passing legislation officially sanctioning the National Security Agency's secret wiretapping of suspected terrorist communications. The eavesdropping has been carried out without warrants since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A federal judge in Detroit recently ruled the program illegal.
...The Senate Judiciary Committee will consider as many as four contradictory bills on the issue tomorrow and could approve all of them. That would leave it to Senate leaders and the White House to sort out how to proceed. [Emphasis added]
From what I can tell the four bills are contradictory only in the details. All four allow warrantless tapping and differ only in how long it can go on (45 days, 60 days) before Congress gets to be informed about it. All four are intended to retroactively approve the warrantless spying that has gone on under this regime. All four are intended to gut judicial review of the warrantless spying. In other words, Americans can kiss the First and Fourth Amendments good-bye.
The last paragraph of the story makes that clear:
The American Civil Liberties Union and top Democrats have said Wilson's and Specter's bills would gut judicial review of executive surveillance, creating so many loopholes that court warrants would become optional. [Emphasis added]
Democracy on the march, indeed.
posted by Diane at 3:55 AM
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