Interestingly one of the judges who wrote the FISA act that has been the center of the wiretapping controversy said before a panel on the issue that the act he wrote in now way supersedes the President's authority to collect national security information under an executive order. Take from that what you will...

I'll restate my feelings on the issue for the record. Do I like people wiretapping the average American's phone calls? No, not at all. But that's not what Bush is doing. He's wiretapping non-average Americans. That is, unless you think that the average American has lots of phone calls with suspected terrorists in foreign lands. I don't, and perhaps investigating people who converse with known or suspected terrorists is the prudent course.

The argument people will make against that is "How do we know who they are wiretapping?" Does it matter? Think about it. They could be using this executive decision to spy on every American there is, but if they actually act on anything not related to terrorism, the evidence they get will be thrown out of court so fast it will make your head spin. And if they have been spying on more people, and have acted on it, it would have come out in the media. There would be a HUGE uproar. There hasn't been, and thus it almost doesn't matter if there is wiretap "creep" or not. I do consider this VERY close to the line. I can't say exactly where the line is, but like pornography, I'll know it when I see it.

This is sort of like the "Bush is taking away our civil liberties" canard. That's such BS! No one can give a single example of civil liberties being taken away by Bush . You have liberals whining about how unfair it is that conservatives rule talk radio, and wanting to pass fairness doctrines to take away that advantage, but I've yet to hear any calls from the right for suspension of any civil liberties. Please feel free to point some out to me if you know any. No one has yet been able to give me an example of the actuality of missing civil liberties, so we'll move down the ladder and look for anyone proposing we do so.

Don't point out Jose Padilla to me. I know about that, and it was a major fuck up, but it's fixed. And don't tell me about the Homeland Security guys going after porn-viewers in the library. They were disciplined for that unsanctioned and anamolous act. They were idiots and no one in the administration condoned or excused their actions in any way.