FISA Fact-Checking

As you know, the House refused (for once) to cave to the Bush administration and allowed the Protect America Act to expire this past weekend... after, of course, the President promised to veto any renewal of it which didn't grant amnesty to the telecom companies. They'll take up the bill again after the recess.

Amazingly enough, we are still alive, even though we were assured by the Republicans that we'd all be dead if we didn't invade Iraq if we voted for John Kerry if we didn't pass the Military Commissions Act if we didn't get this passed by Friday.

But how can this be? The Washington Times-- an extremely conservative paper-- explains-

Many intelligence scholars and analysts outside the government say that today's expiration of certain temporary domestic wiretapping laws will have little effect on national security, despite warnings to the contrary by the White House and Capitol Hill Republican leaders.

With the Protect America Act expiring this weekend, domestic wiretapping rules will revert to the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires the government to obtain a warrant from a special court to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance in the United States.

The original FISA law, these experts say, provides the necessary tools for the intelligence community to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists.

Timothy Lee, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, said the last time Congress overhauled FISA — after the September 11 terrorist attacks — President Bush praised the action, saying the new law "recognizes the realities and dangers posed by the modern terrorist."

"Those are the rules we'll be living under after the Protect America Act expires this weekend," Mr. Lee added. "There's no reason to think our nation will be in any more danger in 2008 than it was in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, or 2006."...

Huh. It's almost as the administration is lying to us. But that would never happen.