OpinionJournal - Abolish FISA

OpinionJournal - Featured Article: "'We're from Congress and we're here to second-guess you.' "

'"What FISA boils down to is an attempt to further put the executive under the thumb of the judiciary, and in unconstitutional fashion."'

'"As a practical war-fighting matter, this interferes with the ability to gather intelligence against anonymous, al Qaeda-linked phone numbers. FISA warrants apply to people, and are supposed to require "probable cause" that the subject is an agent of a foreign power."'

'"That means the government must operate on a different "reasonable basis" standard."'

'"FISA impeded intelligence gathering before 9/11. It was the reason FBI agents decided not to tap the computer of alleged 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui. And it contributed to the NSA's decision not to listen to foreign calls to actual hijacker Khalid al-Midhar, despite knowing that an al Qaeda associate by that name was in the country. The NSA feared being accused of "domestic spying."'

"'FISA is an artifact of post-Vietnam and post-Watergate hostility to executive power,'" that is now being used by those that grew in that age and are now using it against someone they don't like. They don't learn a thing do they?

Try to remember, '"the Bush Administration has taken enormous pains to make sure the NSA wiretaps are both legal and limited. The program is monitored by lawyers, reauthorized every 45 days by the President and has been discussed with both Congress and the FISA court itself. The Administration even decided against warrantless wiretaps on al Qaeda suspects communicating entirely within the U.S., though we'd argue that that too would be both constitutional and prudent."'