Specter's Proposed Law... More Than Meets The Eye?

Yesterday morning, I posted on a piece of legislation Sen. Specter is proposing in response to the President's warrantless spying program. The Washington Post article on the bill made it seem like Specter intended to simply rubberstamp the President's actions. Glenn Greenwald (on this issue like white on rice, as usual) takes a closer look and finds it's different than what the Post described-

Having now carefully reviewed Sen. Specter’s proposed legislation to amend FISA (rather than just the amazingly incomplete and even misleading description of the legislation from yesterday's Washington Post article), I can say with confidence that neither this bill nor any modified version of it is going to be even remotely acceptable to the Bush Administration. And, in ways that may (or may not) be intended by Specter, this proposed legislation -- which the Administration is sure to reject -- can achieve the critical goal of highlighting the Administration's true motives in violating FISA.

As I have argued many times, this scandal arose not because the Administration has adopted some radical views specifically about its eavesdropping powers, but instead, this scandal, at its core, is based on the fact that the Administration has embraced the general theory that the President has the right to make decisions about all matters concerning national security without any limitation or "interference" from the Congress or the courts. The Administration did not eavesdrop in violation of FISA because it believed that the FISA standards were too restrictive or that the FISA process was too cumbersome. It eavesdropped outside of FISA because it believes it has the power to eavesdrop (or do anything else relating to national security) in total secrecy, without any judicial or Congressional oversight and without having to justify its actions to anyone.

For that reason, any legislation (such as Specter's) which simply liberalizes FISA standards but still requires judicial approval as well as judicial and Congressional oversight will be unacceptable to the Administration. The Administration has been and still is defending a general theory of unchecked Executive power, not a theory of eavesdropping. They don't care about tinkering with FISA standards. They care about the power to make national security decisions (including, but not limited to, eavesdropping) without any oversight or limitation. As a result, the Specter legislation will not be any more acceptable to them than the current FISA legislation is, and their rejection of it will only serve to highlight just how radical the Administration's position is -- something which, in my view, is a development that ought to be welcomed and encouraged...

Read his post for a detailed analysis of the proposed bill.

Seems like we may just wanna wait this one out and see where it's going.

In the meantime, Congress should continue to proceed with investigations into the President's actions.

[PS- Speaking of spying and governmental excesses, the National Journal has a great article about how the Defense Department's controversial (but believed to be stopped) 'Total Information Awareness' program still lives. It states that the program "was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens". Just more scary news to digest on this bitterly cold Monday.]