The Washington Post has a good editorial on Sen. Specter’s proposal (which he defended here) that would effectively legalize the NSA spying program and others like it:
Under the Supreme Court’s decades-old understanding, presidential power is at its lowest ebb when the president is acting contrary to the will of Congress, and at its zenith when he is using his own powers in concert with legislative authorization. Right now, to conduct warrantless surveillance domestically Mr. Bush must act at the very least in sharp tension with FISA. Under Mr. Specter’s bill, however, the legislature would be explicitly acknowledging an alternative source of authority for snooping. It would thereby legitimize not only whatever the NSA may now be doing but lots of other surveillance it might dream up.
The bill would also allow–but not require–the administration to seek warrants for entire surveillance programs, based on the flimsiest evidence against a small subset of the population that would be subject to the surveillance. The result is that consistent with the bill, the administration could either ask or not ask judicial permission to monitor individuals or large groups of people, based on evidence or no evidence. Or it could simply act outside the law entirely.
An optional warrant requirement is a contradiction in terms. If a president is willing to flout the clear warrant requirements of FISA, what reason is there to think he’d pay any attention at all to a warrant requirement that’s so riddled with loopholes?
Hat tip: Derek
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