Specter To Lead Wiretapping Legislation Battle

Thanks to Sen. Feingold and others, the public debate on warrantless wiretapping continues...

Sen. Arlen Specter continues to voice opposition to the program's legality-

A vocal Republican critic of the Bush administration's eavesdropping program will preside over Senate efforts to write the program into law, but he was pessimistic Wednesday that the White House wanted to listen.

"They want to do just as they please, for as long as they can get away with it," Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I think what is going on now without congressional intervention or judicial intervention is just plain wrong."...

(bold, as always, added by me)

The article has more details on the planned bills-

One bill, written by Specter, would require a secretive federal intelligence court to conduct regular reviews of the program's constitutionality. A rival approach — drafted by Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine and three other Republicans — would allow the government to conduct warrantless surveillance for up to 45 days before seeking court or congressional approval.

And Specter explains why the DeWine bill is wrong-

Under that approach, Specter said the administration can still "roam and roam and roam, and not find anything, and keep roaming. ... I think that's wrong."

I applaud Specter's efforts (he's not trying to sweep this under the rug like the Roberts/DeWine crew), but I think his plans still miss the point. His approach still doesn't work because it blows off the wrongdoing in favor of 'fixing' the law... as if there was something wrong with the law and not with the President's treatment of it. The administration will fight both planned bills anyway, as signing them is a silent acknowledgment that they behaved outside the law in the first place.

While all this legislative work is going on, we must not ignore that the President still needs to be held accountable for the actions that led to all of this.