Originally published February 21 2006
Reporter rouses the ire of Bush supporters
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
For Wired News, Jennifer Granick writes about unauthorized wiretaps and the attitudes most Americans have adopted regarding the practices, legal or illegal, of our executive branch.
Many of the e-mails parroted the same three debunked rationales offered by the White House as justifications for breaking the law.
One writer called me a bimbo, and another told me to "go back to Afghanistan" if I hated our free country so much that I would voice concern about how our government doesn't respect our freedoms.
Underlying all the anger, the fear and the credulity of those who wrote in was the theme that asking intelligence agents to get court authorization for surveillance would result in another Sept. 11.
The principle of separation of powers -- of checks and balances -- is so fundamental to our system of government, and so familiar to anyone who grew up here, how is it that so many of my fellow Americans can forget it completely when the question is one of tracking terrorists?
In recent polling -- as in my e-mail inbox -- people emphasized that the targets of the National Security Agency surveillance weren't just American citizens, but were collaborators, communicating with known terrorists.
All the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, requires in an emergency is that officials contact the secret court within 72 hours after performing a wiretap to show probable cause that the target of the spying was in fact a terrorist collaborator.
The conservative 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has expressed concern that the Justice Department told judges one story to keep Jose Padilla detained as an enemy combatant but presented a different story to obtain an indictment against him.
The Bush administration isn't the first to make these kinds of mistakes and it won't be the last.
Getting a warrant takes more time and effort than not getting a warrant.
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