NYT editorial: THE NEED TO KNOW HOW FAR OUR LIBERTIES HAVE BEEN BREACHED

The Need to Know
Published: August 11, 2007

....The administration has refused to say how much warrantless spying it has been doing. Clearly, it is more than Mr. Bush has acknowledged, but Americans need to know exactly how far their liberties have been breached and whether the operation included purely domestic eavesdropping. And why did Mr. Bush feel compelled to construct an outlaw eavesdropping operation — apart, that is, from his broader effort to expand presidential power and evade checks and balances?

It’s not that FISA makes it too hard; the court approves virtually every warrant request. It’s not an issue of speed. The law allows the government to initiate surveillance and get a warrant later if necessary.

Instead of answering these questions, the administration has done its best to ensure that everyone stays confused. It has refused repeated requests by Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, for documents relating to the president’s order creating the spying program, and the Justice Department’s legal justifications for it.

When this issue resurfaces, Mr. Bush will undoubtedly claim executive privilege, as he has done whenever he has been asked to come clean with Americans about his decision-making. But those documents should be handed over without delay for review by all members of Congress. We also agree with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has petitioned the FISA court, which normally works in secret, to make public its opinion on the scope of the government’s wiretapping powers.

If Mr. Bush wants Americans to give him and his successors the power to spy on them at will, Americans should be allowed to know why it’s supposedly so necessary and how much their freedoms are being abridged. If Congress once again allows itself to be cowed by Mr. Bush’s fear-mongering, it must accept responsibility for undermining the democratic values that separate this nation from the terrorists that Mr. Bush claims to be fighting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/opinion/11sat1.html?hp

new Fisa bill in one form or another----This is encouraging. Yet, Bushco and the Repugs have managed to stick together (with help of Dems last round!!-and this is not encouraging, even as Pelosi says she will have bill to 'fix' their blunder).

that statement imo. If the war on terra is, in fact, phony, the the reasons to need these surveillance powers would also be phony as were the reasons to invade and occupy Iraq. Houston, is there a pattern here?

ever so often...throw out an editorial trying to convince the people that used to read newspapers, to come back to them. Because they aren't really another arm of the bush administration. Won't work.

And my guess is the Sulzbergers are Democrats -- although I could be wrong.

If?

:shrug: