Washington Post trackbacks are an endless source of entertainment, since the often point me to blogs I'd never read. Today's seletion is the Brothers Judd, who miss the point completely on the domestic spying mess:
The problem for "civil libertarians" is that even before you get to this utilitarian analsysis you have to clear both the constitutional structure of the Republic and convince people that the feds listening to calls from terrorists is an abridgment of our civil rights.
Who, exactly is saying that no spying on terrorists should be allowed on civil liberties grounds? Nobody. We've all made peace with the concept of warrants, secret or public, FISA or Baltimore City criminal criminal court, beforehand or within 72 hours. Of course, it would be a great opportunity to tar the ACLU if they argued that terrorists should be wiretaps, but that's not what they're saying.
What all this comes down to is Judd's proposition that this is about "feds listening to calls from terrorists." How do we know that they're not listening in to Democrats or Dixie Chicks? We don't, because FISA has been eliminated as a check on the power of the executive, a check put in after America found out that Nixon was using wiretaps to keep an eye on political enemies. Of course, we hope, for the sake of national security and the respect of the rule of law, that the only thing being kept secret is "feds listening to calls from terrorists." The problem is that we don't know and we can't under the wartime-president-as-king model.
It's one thing to trust President Bush, Attorney General Gonzalez and every shift boss at the NSA who makes the day-to-day decision on who to listen to, but that's not not good enough in a constitutional republic. Pretending that opponents of the system want to shut it down completely instead of making it accountable won't change that.
Agreed. No one has a problem with wiretapping terrorists. Just get a f-ing warrant before doing it. Have some oversight.