More fear mongering from Randy Kuhl
F29th has a pretty good run-down on yesterday’s Congressional showdown over FISA. And he catches Randy with his hand in the fear-mongering jar (which is located in the back of the jerk store, for you Seinfeld fans):
On his blog, Randy Kuhl makes the claim that FISA could have hampered the search for a missing US soldier in Baghdad last year. According to Kuhl, the search for kidnapped Spec. Alex Jimenez and two other soldiers was hampered because “searchers waited 10 hours” while authorization for a wiretap was sought from the Justice Department. Some of Jimenez’ kidnappers could have been communicating via a phone which had signals routed through a switch in the United States, and the FISA court had earlier ruled that such signals can’t be intercepted without a warrant.
At least Randy didn’t mention 24
The facts in the case, as laid out by the Washington Post, show that FISA was not the issue here. As any reasonable person would expect, the Army began searching for the missing soldiers immediately, and they requested the wiretap 86 hours into the search. Since FISA allows an emergency 72 hour warrants with the consent of the Justice Department, all of the delay was in the Justice Department, and some of it was due to tracking down Alberto Gonzales. If the Jimenez case shows anything, it shows that the Bush Administration’s Justice Department is (typically) incompetent because they’re unable to come up with a streamlined process to implement the emergency provisions of FISA.
At least Randy didn’t mention 24 as part of his argument. But what’s infuriating here is the Republican obsession with taking isolated events and attempting them to undermine the Constitution. The lack of respect they have for the guiding principles of this nation, not to mention the very notion of the rule of law, is simply astounding to me.
Related posts:
(which is located in the back of the jerk store, for you Seinfeld fans)
(Or, which is located in the back of the toilet store, for you “Anchor Man” fans)