About That NSA Program
Rick Moran is in full rant mode. For good reason. It appears that the much maligned NSA "warrantless wiretapping" program is nothing - nothing at all - like what the left has painted it. In fact, there are very significant safeguards built in. And the oversight board that Congress authorized for it says so.
I have spent much of the last two years on this site railing against the hysterical, exaggerated, and ultimately dishonest charges made by people like Glenn Greenwald and others that the Bush Administration was tearing apart the Constitution and trying to set up some kind of a dictatorship.
The cornerstone of their bilious rantings has always been that the Administration’s NSA intercept program was, on its face, illegal. In fact, the NSA program has been cited as reason number one to impeach the President and no amount of reasoning by those of us who cautioned against jumping to conclusions about a program that we knew so little about deflected these despicable jackanapes from wailing about our “lost freedoms” and comparing Bush to Hitler.
Well pardon my French, but the only thing I have to say to the gaggle of goofs who have spent much of the last two years in formulating some of the most vile, calumnious, and over the top charges regarding the Administration’s cavalier attitude toward our civil liberties is… BITE ME:
After a delay of more than a year, a government board appointed to guard Americans’ privacy and civil liberties during the war on terror has been told the inner workings of the government’s electronic eavesdropping program.The briefing for the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board had been delayed because President Bush was concerned—after several media leaks—about widening the circle of people who knew exact details of the secret eavesdropping program.
The board, created by Congress and appointed by Bush, focused on other classified work since it was named in spring 2005, but continued to press for a formal briefing by the National Security Agency.
A breakthrough was reached in recent days, and the five members were briefed by senior officials last week.
Board members said that they were impressed by the safeguards the government has built into the NSA’s monitoring of phone calls and computer transmissions, and that they wished the administration could tell the public more about them to ease distrust.
“If the American public, especially civil libertarians like myself, could be more informed about how careful the government is to protect our privacy while still protecting us from attacks, we’d be more reassured,” said Lanny Davis , a former Clinton White House lawyer who is the board’s lone liberal Democrat.
Now the left will say that Lanny Davis is not left leaning enough, I am quite sure. They will either a)completely ignore this or b) go off on Davis. But this is a very significant report. The NSA program was one of the cornerstones of the left's attacks on Bush. And like that other cornerstone, the Plame nonsense, it turns out to be be just that. Nonsense. So, how much else of their belief structures are also as deluded?
H/T Doug Ross. Others: Hot Air, Ed Morrisey, STACLU, The Anchoress,
By jpe, Thursday, 30 November , 2006 @ 8:40 am
Bush is still violating the law, safeguards or no. Stating that it doesn’t matter if the law is broken so long as nothing bad comes of it is starting along an unwise path.