Gay Conservative

Don’t get me wrong people.  I’m glad that Congress apparently gave President Bush a good bill authorizing wiretapping by the NSA of suspect foreign calls.  But I guess I’m really confused.  Here’s the skinny per our buddies at the NYT .

Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.

They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.

“This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation.

I’m really confused now.  The Democrats in Congress have wasted tons of time and taxpayer dollars challenging the NSA and wiretapping.  Even some Republicans chimed in and supported the witchhunt.  The MSM was all over Bush’s case.  This threatened civil liberties and undermined our privacy.  Right?  Well, then why the hell did all of that suddenly change?  Why did the Dems suddenly legalize the NSA program with so little resistance?

And get this tid-bit…..

The new law gives the attorney general and the director of national intelligence the power to approve the international surveillance, rather than the special intelligence court. The court’s only role will be to review and approve the procedures used by the government in the surveillance after it has been conducted. It will not scrutinize the cases of the individuals being monitored.

The law also gave the administration greater power to force telecommunications companies to cooperate with such spying operations. The companies can now be compelled to cooperate by orders from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.

The much-hated Al Gonzalez now has the authority to jointly authorize wiretapping without a warrant from the courts.  Democrats have decided that the AG is not fit to serve in his position, but it’s ok if oversees and authorizes the “once-terrible” wiretapping program.

 This goes to show one of two things.  Either (a) you can get anything passed if you threaten to hold up Congress’ recess, or (b) the Democrats suddenly stopped the partisan games because they realized the political suicide involved in a failure to give the President the powers he needs to fight terrorism.

I’m glad the matter is solved (for 6 months at least).  But I’m so utterly confused as to why it took us so long to get here.  The partisanship is sickening and the hypocrisy is unbelievable.

Update:  FoxNews.com has published a news release from the White House downplaying the NYT assessment of the new law.  Still, based on my reading of this so far, it’s a helluva lot more than what the Dems have ever offered or ever said was acceptable.  I’m still looking at this as victory and still regard the Dems as hypocrites for holding out for so long, then giving Bush this authority while nobody was supposedly looking.  I guess we can watch the liberal blogs to see if there is an outcry.  If so, then we know that the White House scored a victory.