Most of you here in North Carolina may have heard of
Jason Lewis, who holds court on
WBT after Rush from 3 to 6. I was surprised to see that he did some time in the Twin Cities, at KSTP. He was actually rated #1 ... what's up with that, Minnesota Kossacks?
Well, I went ahead and bit the bullet, subscribing to his podcast to see what the wingnuts are hearing down here.
The biggest hoot from Tuesday's show (at about the 12:15 mark, if you're listening on iTunes), is that Shrub's spying was necessary because there were cases were possible plans for another attack were being discussed right then.
I knew that this talking point was coming from the right. But it's very easy to debunk. Um, Jason? Even under that scenario, Shrub could have gotten a retroactive warrant. But he didn't. Your argument doesn't wash. Next ...
Lewis had an admittedly ill-prepared Dem caller on when, at about the 25:40 mark, he cited a 2002 case which cited a previous case that ruled the president had inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for the purposes of obtaining foreign intelligence. In Lewis' view, FISA is trumped by the president's authority to conduct war. So does that mean the 4th Amendment goes in the crapper when we're at war?
At the 30:10 mark, he mentions the name of the case he cited earlier--U.S. v. Truong (1980), in which the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the president had inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. The key word, as I see it, is "foreign." What Lewis doesn't tell us is that another section of FISA states that if a U.S. citizen or permanent resident is involved in any way in a phone conversation, you have to get a warrant.
Tsk, tsk. Surely you can do better than this, Jason.