FISAGATE UPDATE….A FISA court judge has resigned in protest over the president’s approval of domestic spying by the NSA. Five senators, including two Republicans, have called for hearings into the program. Some purely domestic communications turn out to have been trapped by the NSA’s surveillance.
This program was the result of a panicky decision by a panicky president. As with its spiritual predecessors ? the Palmer raids of the 20s, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the excesses of McCarthyism in the 50s, and the FBI’s COINTELPRO program in the 60s ? cooler heads will eventually conclude that it was unnecessary and maybe even counterproductive.
As Arthur Schlesinger says, whenever we do things like this, we always regret it in the morning. The only question is when we’re going to wake up this time. When we do, maybe we’ll finally get serious about fighting terrorism.
