Limits to Power

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't pretend any great insight here. I would just say that it is my understanding that after Sept. 11th we passed the Patriot Act, with overwhelming bipartisan support, to bring the same approach of law enforcement to terrorists in the US that we use to track down organized crime and drug dealers. That is the domestic program, which needs to be renewed.

What seems to have been lost in the blowup about erosion of civil liberties is the distinction between our domestic and international approaches. The recent dispute over warrantless NSA surveillance specifically concerns monitoring communications between Al Qaeda overseas and the US. In an interview in the weekend edition of the Wall St. Journal:

Mr. Cheney explains that the program in question is quite modest: "This notion [is] peddled out there by some that this is, quote, 'domestic surveillance' or 'domestic spying.' No, it's not. It is the interception of communications, one end of which is outside the United States, and one end of which, either outside the U.S. or inside, we have reason to believe is al-Qaeda-connected. Those are two pretty clear requirements, both of which need to be met."

This specific type of surveillance has traditionally been undertaken by Presidents, including President Clinton, in the interest of national security:

That power, Mr. Cheney counters, is inherent in the office: "The combination of the president's constitutional authority under Article II as commander in chief, the resolution Congress passed after 9/11 [authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda], as well as the historical precedent that all presidents have claimed in terms of their authority with respect to intercepting enemy communications" all establish "ample justification for the NSA program."

Sounds like common sense to me. How else can we focus in on specific threats and quickly develop the actionable intelligence we need to protect our country?

This is what we are trying to prevent:

"I think that 9/11 was a watershed event," he says. "It became clear that we were up against an adversary who, with a relatively small number of people, could come together and mount a devastating attack against the United States." This brought into focus the danger of proliferation: "The ultimate threat now would be a group of al Qaeda in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon."