A Stitch in Haste

The White House, and a parade of conservative shills, are insisting that the warrantless wiretapping scandal is not a scandal at all.

A key embarrassment that requires extra-special (and extra dubious) talking points is the "ticking time bomb" defense (I prefer the term "Jack Bauer defense"). This is a particularly difficult sell for the simple reason that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act specifically allows intelligence agencies to "wiretap first and get a warrant later" -- as much as 72 hours later. The secret court that issues secret wiretap warrants is therefore not a dangerous obstacle to preventing imminent threats.

Which isn't stopping the apologists from insisting that even a secret, post hoc court is sometimes "just too much to ask."

Someone in the know disagrees:

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work.

Every unbiased, objective analysis of the warrantless wiretapping scandal insists that, one way or the other, the practice is questionable. Now even those embedded in the process are saying the same thing.

So much for the apologists' insistence that authority for the warrantless wiretapping is "clear" or "well settled."