Taking a step back on NSA wiretapping

I’ll confess that the question of the legality of the NSA surveillance is opaque to me. My reflexive instinct is that if the President seeks (and receives) the green light from the Attorney General, career lawyers at the Justice Department, Defense Department lawyers, along with tacit approval from Congressional leaders, he’s in the clear. The prevailing opinion among cooler heads on the blogosphere is that President Bush may have violated the FISA law, but since he derives his powers from Article II of the Constitution, he did nothing that may be considered illegal. Others, of course, may disagree and Debra Saunders suggests that they draw up “Articles of Impeachment”:

Angry leftists are so hysterical that they cannot distinguish between government agents eavesdropping on a president's political enemies, and the data mining of international phone calls in an earnest effort to thwart another Sept. 11 terrorist attack. They don't see that Bush, rather then trying to hide his role in the effort, signed off on the program more than 30 times.

The President’s enemies should take note of his unwavering position on this issue thus far: Bush hasn’t backed down one iota on the NSA wiretapping program. Maybe he’s seen the poll numbers showing a wide majority of Americans support surveillance on potential enemies receiving phone calls from Pakistan. Maybe (just maybe!) he just believes he should do everything within his power to track down terrorists. Here’s Dick Cheney in a speech yesterday:

"No one can guarantee that we won't be hit again, but neither should anyone say that the relative safety of the last four years came as an accident," Cheney said. "America has been protected not by luck but by sensible policy decisions."

The Democrats have become unhinged with madness. I wonder what Al-Qaeda thinks about a political party attacking the American President for taking steps to (over) zealously defend the country? After 9/11, Democrats and Republicans stood together and took action to root out the terrorists. Since then, the Democrats have watched the polls shift in the luxury of contemporary safety and decided that there’s political advantage to be gained.

At least until the next attack. Then the long knives will come out and the Democrats will declaim with great anger that “not enough was done.”