I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction.
Regarding the revelation that President Bush (by his own admission) illegally took it upon himself to order the NSA to disregard laws that require the government to obtain warrants to surveill Americans, one thing that occurred almost immediately to me, but that I have yet to see anyone else catch on to, is this...
The court that has been illegally circumvented, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, has long been notorious among civil liberties advocates for being a mere "rubber stamp" court. The administration could have gotten
any warrant from it that they would have bothered to request.
Think carefully about that. Any warrant. All they had to do was ask.
The administration actively avoided asking the FISA court. Why?
It wasn't laziness. The president had to keep approving the orders, repeatedly, every 45 days or so, as I recall from news coverage of this outrage so far.
It most definitely wasn't a security issue. The FISA court is -- lock, stock and barrel -- a part of the national security team.
There's only ONE defining difference between what has occurred and what would currently be considered legal. That ONE difference is lack of paperwork.
Since the administration had to actively work at this, having the President repeatedly approve the orders, the only rational conclusion is that the administration specifically wanted to avoid requesting some of the warrants in writing.
So why would they want to do that?
Here's my prediction.
Not only has the President broken the law (not to mention trashing the Constitution and making a joke of his oath of office)...
Not only has he over-reached to acquire powers dangerous, at the very least, because of their potential for political abuse...
We can be reasonably sure that his administration HAS politically abused these illegal surveillance powers -- already. It's the only conceivable reason they would try so hard to avoid doing the paperwork. Besides whatever other laws were violated by Bush giving those orders, the orders themselves are blatant evidence of far worse.
Cross-posted at my blog.