FISA Fight: With all due respect, Madame Speaker

Nancy Pelosi held a conference call with bloggers this morning, and one of the issues discussed was the FISA fight and retroactive amnesty. TPMMuckraker reports:

In a conference call with bloggers today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made it clear that her highest priority for a surveillance bill was that it contain a so-called "exclusivity" provision -- a measure that would explicitly state that the bill would be the "exclusive means" by which the government would conduct surveillance, or in other words, the president does not have the power to ignore the law if he/she so pleases.

"Exclusivity is the issue," she said....

Pelosi says that she "absolutely" opposes retroactive immunity for the telecoms, but that she "didn't want the fight to be so focused there that we neglect exclusivity."

The problem with this reasoning is its short-sightedness. Exclusivity, the provision that states that only FISA and the criminal wiretapping statute provide the executive branch authority to wiretap, can be revisited next year with likely larger Democratic majorities in Congress and Democratic president. In fact, most of the provisions in the proposed legislation could be.

With one important exception: retroactive amnesty for the telcos.

Once granted, retroactive amnesty would be considered an acquired right. It couldn't be taken away. That toothpaste would be out of the tube forever.