The Bush administration rejected a 2002 Senate proposal that would have made it easier for FBI agents to obtain surveillance warrants in terrorism cases, concluding that the system was working well and that it would likely be unconstitutional to lower the legal standard.However, the White House submitted (i.e. endorsed) to Congress a Justice Department memo stating that the 72-hour period provided for in The Patriot Act for obtaining warrants after the actual eavesdropping took place had given the administration "the speed and flexibility it needed in order to engage in eavesdropping"... the complete opposite of what they claimed is their reason for going around it now.
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The administration has contended that it launched a secret program of warrantless domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency in part because of the time it takes to obtain such secret warrants from federal judges under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
So, to sum up: BEFORE, the White House said that proposed adjustments to the law they are now breaking... changes which would have made their current actions legal... were unconstitutional, and that as the current law was set up, they had all the resources they needed to operate within the law.
Well, as always, I'm sure there will be semantics, skewed logical arguments, and Clintonite "definition of is" twisting of meanings, but in the world of appearances, which is all that the average dumb American (i.e. the 40% of us who don't know which political party controls Congress) cares about, this is not at all good.
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