WaPo calls it A Discredit to the GOP

WaPo reported The Bush administration's distortion, for political purposes, of the Democratic position on warrantless surveillance is loathsome.

So is the MSM's distortion, for political purposes, of what the NSA is doing.

Despite the best efforts of Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, and Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, to make it seem otherwise, Democrats are not opposed to vigorous, effective surveillance that could uncover terrorist activity.

Then tell them to shut up.

Nor are the concerns that they are expressing unique to their party. Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Arlen Specter (Pa.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Sam Brownback (Kan.) have expressed legal doubts about the surveillance program. Do they, too, have a "pre-9/11 worldview," as Mr. Rove said of the Democrats?

Either that, or they want to increase the power of the Congress, and decrease the power of the President, even if it will hurt the country.

Believing there should be constraints on unchecked executive power is not the same as being weak-kneed about the war against terrorism. Critics are suggesting that President Bush should have gone through normal procedures for conducting such surveillance or asked Congress to provide clear legal authority for the National Security Agency activity. They are not contending that such surveillance shouldn't be conducted at all.

By suggesting he should get a warrent for each call sounds very reminiscent of the way Clinton approached things, being unwilling to accept it when countries wanted to turn Osama over to us, because we did not have enough evidence to prosecute him in court. Bush is not involved in Domestic Surveillance where both ends of the call are in the US.

Shortly after midnight on the morning of June 13, 1942, four men landed on a beach near Amagansett, Long Island, New York, from a German submarine, clad in German uniforms and bringing ashore enough explosives, primers, and incendiaries to support an expected two-year career in the sabotage of American defense-related production. On June 17, 1942, a similar group landed on Ponte Vedra Beach, near Jacksonville, Florida, equipped for a similar career in industrial disruption. By June 27, 1942, all eight saboteurs had been arrested without having accomplished one act of destruction. Tried before a Military Commission, they were found guilty. One was sentenced to life imprisonment, another to thirty years, and six received the death penalty, which was carried out within a few days. I am sure these saboteurs needed to take to each other, and probably while they were in the US. Did Democrats of the day insist that the FBI get a warrent every time the wanted to listen in on their plans, or did they not mind, since FDR was a Democrat?

No leading Democrat has argued for barring this kind of potentially useful technique.