Last Saturday my wife and I went to the opera. We’ve had the same seats for 20 years and over time we’ve come to know the people sitting in front of us (and in front of them, too) pretty well. Before the opera and during intermissions we exchange small talk about the opera, families, jobs, pets.
Last year my wife and I had the spare tire on our vehicle stolen when it was parked in the outdoor parking lot we’ve used for years when we go to the opera. So we changed to an indoor lot. Last Saturday we were comparing notes on the various different parking structures in the vicinity of Lyric Opera and the conversation drifted to the security precautions parking lots have taken since 9/11. The conversation took a somewhat abrupt turn when our seating companion said “I think it’s a good thing that the government is eavesdropping on overseas conversations. I think it’s what they should be doing.”
I don’t think our seating companion is alone in his belief.
This conversation, apparently, was timely:
THE MOST detailed legal justification to date for the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic surveillance has emerged from the Bush administration, but the 42-page version isn’t any more convincing than its shorter predecessors. In some ways — particularly in its broad conception of presidential power in wartime — it is more disturbing.
As it had implied previously but never flatly stated, the administration asserted that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would be unconstitutional if it were read to prevent the president from engaging in the kind of warrantless surveillance that the administration has been conducting.
This interpretation, with its expansive view of the commander in chief’s powers, would call into question Congress’s ability to prevent the administration from engaging in torture or cruel and inhuman treatment or to establish rules for detainees and military tribunals — exactly the areas in which we have been encouraging Congress to step up to the plate.
I have no opinion on whether the President’s actions have been legal or illegal—I’m content to let the investigations and lawsuits run their course. We’ll find out. But there is not one issue but two: 1) has the president acted illegally? 2) should what the president did be illegal? I think that to all but civil liberty absolutists and Bush’s political opponents the answer to the second question is mostly “No”.
I heard John Kerry’s interview on ABC’s This Week program on Sunday and I’m afraid the analyst who wrote the description on ABC’s web site got something wrong. I haven’t seen a transcript but I remember Kerry saying something to the effect of “If the president makes the case to us that the law should be changed, come to us and we’ll change the law”. That largely concedes the civil liberties argument.
UPDATE: Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice, as usual, has a very sensible post on the subject.
Welll, I just stuck my foot in it over at Joe Gandelman’s place. I expect the beatings to begin any minute.