Domestic Spying Endangers Freedoms

Losing liberties is a small price to pay for ensuring the nation's safety. That's the conclusion the Bush administration seems to have reached. President George W. Bush must have missed history class when Patrick Henry was the man of the hour. Henry was more than ready to give up his life in pursuit of liberty for all in the our nation's early days.

"We're at war and we must protect America's secrets," Bush said during a Monday press conference.

Bush is staunchly defending a once top secret domestic spying program, unmasked by the New York Times last Thursday.

"We looked at the possible scenarios...The people responsible for helping us protect and defend came forth with the current program because it enables us to move faster and quicker. And that's important. We've got to be fast on our feet, quick to detect and prevent," he said.

He also responded to questions about circumventing the court born out of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by conducting surveillance without warrants. Bush said the court is consulted when long-term monitoring is necessary. What? I'm missing something. If some current monitoring was less than "long-term," then how effective is it? Of course, the bigger question is how legal is it. Bush said both the U.S. Constitution and Congress gave him the authority to put the program into action.

"I swore to uphold the laws. Do I have the legal authority to do this? And the answer is: absolutely. As I mentioned in my remarks, the legal authority is derived from the Constitution as well as the authorization of force by the United States Congress," he said.

When pressed for details what powers Bush was exercising, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice didn't go into specific detail about the sources of that power during a visit to NBC's "Meet The Press" Sunday.

She did say FISA was one of those sources. But Rice became vague.

"The president has drawn on additional authorities that he has under the Constitution and under other statutes," Rice said.

When "Meet The Press" moderator Tim Russert asked Rice what those "additional authorities" were, she pleaded a modicum of ignorance.