Well it looks like the Democrats and some Republicans are not the only ones
wondering about Bush’s legal authorization to order the wiretaps:

The presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government
surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified
briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality
of President Bush’s domestic spying program, according to several
intelligence and government sources.

Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said in
interviews that they want to know why the administration believed secretly
listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails of U.S. citizens without
court authorization was legal. Some of the judges said they are particularly
concerned that information gleaned from the president’s eavesdropping
program may have been improperly used to gain authorized wiretaps from their
court.

“The questions are obvious,” said U.S. District Judge Dee Benson of Utah.
“What have you been doing, and how might it affect the reliability and
credibility of the information we’re getting in our court?”

Such comments underscored the continuing questions among judges about the
program, which most of them learned about when it was disclosed last week by
the New York Times. On Monday, one of 10 FISA judges, federal Judge James
Robertson, submitted his resignation — in protest of the president’s
action, according to two sources familiar with his decision. He will
maintain his position on the U.S. District Court here.

Article continues

here.

I had been wondering what the remaining FISA judges thought about this matter
and it looks like they are wondering also. If the President had this authority
and it was so clear that he did then the judges would have no reason to question
it. True Bush feels judicial activism is a problem and has decided to take it
upon himself and just totally bypass an entire branch of government. That sounds
like executive activism to me and that puts our country on a dangerous collision
course with becoming a dictatorship.

One part of this story I find really troubling is the following:

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said
the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too
much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

“For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap,”
said the official. “They couldn’t dream one up.”

The NSA program, and the technology on which it is based, makes it
impossible to meet that criterion because the program is designed to
intercept selected conversations in real time from among an enormous number
relayed at any moment through satellites.

That sounds like a very dangerous argument. So I guess that the NSA can
target a group of phone calls, say everything coming in from the Middle East,
and listen in on them to see if they here anything about terrorism. What about
soldiers calling home? What about business men or family members who have loved
ones working over there?

And what is that about dreaming up a justification? That is really
disturbing. So the President wants to be able to tap phones because of a gut
feeling, little angels and devils standing on his shoulders, or little hairs
standing up on the back of his neck? That is a power asking for abuse.

Luckily Arlen Specter has said he wants to start hearings into this next
month. The outcome of those meeting should be very interesting. Bush says he can
do this because his lawyers and Alberto Gonzalez say so. Well he really needs to
go back to social studies class and read up. His lawyers job is to argue the law
while Gonzalez’s job is to enforce the law. COURTS interpret the law. That is
the constitution and that has been interpreted in the past, now it needs to be
enforced.