Legal Commentary

Naming Names

By TChris

As an unusually long editorial in The New York Times expresses,

it was distressing — and depressing — to watch Congress wrench Americans’ civil liberties back to where they were in the days before Watergate, when the United States government listened to our phone calls whenever it wanted.

From Republicans (all of whom voted for the FISA bill except McCain who was too busy trying to be noticed to show up at the one place he might have been noticed today) this is what we expect:

Senator Christopher S. Bond, the Missouri Republican who is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said there was nothing to fear in the bill “unless you have Al Qaeda on your speed dial.”

From Democrats we expect more. For Senators Baucus, Bayh, Carper, Casey, Conrad, Feinstein, Inouye, Johnson, Kohl, Landrieu, Lincoln, McCaskill, Mikulski, both Nelsons, Obama, Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar, Webb, and Whitehouse, and for the United States Constitution, this is a dark day indeed.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 09, 2008 (boomark / email).