CATO and FISA

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The Washington Times quoted someone from the CATO Institute in their piece on FISA this morning. Now I have the CATO blog in my blogroll and while they are certainly right wing I often find myself agreeing with them unless we are talking about economics. I decided to head over to CATO and see what they were saying about FISA. I found two posts by Timothy B Lee, the fellow quoted by the Times. The first, FISA Confusion, is where the Times got the quotes for it's article. Go read the entire thing, a lot more information than given in the Times article. The second post is a reaction to the Times article, Even the Washington Times Says Bush Is Wrong about FISA.

There wasn’t an emergency last August when Congress was stampeded into passing the Protect America Act. There wasn’t an emergency last month when the two-week extension got passed. And nothing catastrophic is happening now that the PAA is lapsing. But as long as the president said there was an emergency and the Democrats acted like there was an emergency, journalists weren’t going to say otherwise. When both “sides” of a dispute agree on some point, most journalists will simply accept that point as valid and don’t dig any deeper.

Now that House Democrats are willing to forthrightly state that the expiration of the PAA isn’t a big deal — and act like it’s not a big deal — journalists suddenly have to do their homework and find out who’s telling the truth. And once they do their research, it’s not hard to figure out who’s got the better argument.

Sometimes, good policy is good politics. I think this is one of those cases. If the House leadership capitulates to the president in the next few weeks, it will reinforce the impression that the president was right all along, and we really do need to sacrifice Americans’ privacy in order to fight terrorism. If, on the other hand, House Democrats refuse to enact legislation that undermines judicial oversight or the rule of law, it will cause journalists to write stories like this one, that dig deeper into the arguments of each side. Since in reality, the argument for eviscerating FISA is built on little more than distortions and alarmist rhetoric, that heightened scrutiny will only help those who believe in the rule of law.

Great observations and I hope the Democrats in both the House and the Senate will read it because it contains some really sound advice for them.

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Credibility - Bush administration edition

Commentary By Ron Beasley

I awoke this morning relieved to see I was still alive in spite of the fact that the Protect America Act had expired. According to the right wing Washington Times I shouldn't have been surprised.
Analysts say FISA will suffice

Many intelligence scholars and analysts outside the government say that today's expiration of certain temporary domestic wiretapping laws will have little effect on national security, despite warnings to the contrary by the White House and Capitol Hill Republican leaders.
With the Protect America Act expiring this weekend, domestic wiretapping rules will revert to the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires the government to obtain a warrant from a special court to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance in the United States.

The original FISA law, these experts say, provides the necessary tools for the intelligence community to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists.

Timothy Lee, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, said the last time Congress overhauled FISA — after the September 11 terrorist attacks — President Bush praised the action, saying the new law "recognizes the realities and dangers posed by the modern terrorist."

"Those are the rules we'll be living under after the Protect America Act expires this weekend," Mr. Lee added. "There's no reason to think our nation will be in any more danger in 2008 than it was in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, or 2006."

The Bush administration, the Republicans and the right wing bloggers have so little credibility left that not even the Washington Times is buying their b--- S--- fear mongering. My congratulations to the House Democrats and my advice for the Senate Democrats is to grow a pair.

Update
John Cole:

And that isn’t the liberal media saying that. That is the Moonie Times.

Bush is so credibility free that even the Washington Times won’t carry his water any more, and the wimpy Democrats in Congress are for once defying him. Can you say “lame duck?”

And while you are over there read this great take down of Nicholas Kristoff.

Update II
Mr I've been wrong about everything, Bill Kristol, thinks congress should just give proven criminal George W. Bush the benifit of the doubt.
Kristol: It’s ‘Unbelievable’ That Congress Won’t Give Bush ‘The Benefit Of The Doubt’ On Spying

Update III
What it's all about from Digby:

The Republicans are wise and understand that this isn't an easy issue to explain to the American people. They know they can just say that the Democrats are refusing to give the President the tools he needs to keep terrorists from killing you in your beds. And it might work again. But the administration has been crying wolf for nearly six years, over and over again, whenever they want something, and it's human nature to discount these threats after a while. The Republicans will run on beating back the twin boogeymen of terror and taxes, and there are a fair number of people who will throw in their lot with the fear mongers. But it seems pretty clear that most of the country is not as responsive to this stuff as they used to be.

9/11 was a terrible day and the price the world has paid for it has been huge. Iraqis and Americans and Afghans continue to pay the price every day. But this mindless fearmongering has turned 9/11 into a cheap Republican advertising campaign. I'm sure they'd love to switch gears and try another tack, but really, what do they have? They've got their "reformer with results" St John McCain out there snarling out the words "my friends" like a rabid pit bull with Tourette's Syndrome and talking about staying in Iraq for a thousand years while claiming that he's going to radically cut non-defense government spending during a recession. He's like a Salvadore Dali version of Bush.

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