It looks like Pat Roberts has made somewhat a change in how he feels the
wiretapping program should operate:
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Friday that he
wanted the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program brought
under the authority of a special intelligence court, a move President Bush
has argued is not necessary.The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said he had some
concerns that the court could not issue warrants quickly enough to keep up
with the needs of the eavesdropping program. But he said he would like to
see those details worked out.Mr. Roberts also said he did not believe that exempting the program from
the purview of the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act “would be met with much support” on Capitol Hill. Yet that is exactly
the approach the Bush administration is pursuing.
Article continues
here.
I guess Bush was praising a deal with Senate a little too early. Roberts is
right though, a court must oversee the decisions to wiretap. I thought we had a
court that did this though – the FISA court. I guess in the mind of “small
government” conservatives, another court won’t hurt anything.
One thing that has bothered me about this entire argument is Bush saying the
constitution gives him the right to conduct these taps, there by ignoring the
fourth amendment. If each branch of government assumed this same level of power,
that their powers in the constitution allowed them to circumvent other parts of
it, then we would be headed towards a governmental anarchy. For example, the
constitution. states that Congress will make the rules and laws for the
Military. Well that means they should now have the power to tell the military to
double our troops in Iraq. They just need to make it a rule or law.