RIGHTS VS LIFE

Sensible Democrats are worried that all the hoopla about spying on terrorist suspects, and the supposedly civil-rights-violating Patriot Act, will help Republicans:

"I think when you suggest that civil liberties are just as much at risk today as the country is from terrorism, you've gone too far if you leave that impression. I don't believe that's true," said Michael O'Hanlon, a national-security analyst at the Brookings Institution who advises Democrats on defense issues.

"I get nervous when I see the Democrats playing this [civil liberties] issue out too far. They had better be careful about the politics of it," said Mr. O'Hanlon, who says the Patriot Act is "good legislation."

"The Republicans still hold the advantage on every national-security issue we tested," said Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster and former adviser to President Clinton, who co-authored a Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) memo on the party's national-security weaknesses.

Nervousness among Democrats intensified earlier this month after Democrats led a filibuster against the Patriot Act that threatened to block the measure, followed by a victory cry from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, who declared at a party rally, "We killed the Patriot Act."

These Democrats say attacks on anti-terrorist intelligence programs will deepen mistrust of their ability to protect the nation's security, a weakness that led in part to the defeat of Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, last year.

Let's hope killing the Patriot Act doesn't get any Americans killed.

Update: The lefty super-brains at Larvatus Prodeo are still desperately hoping something will come of the Bush ordered NSA intercepts. Chris Sheil started the impeachment ball rolling with this post:

Tim has a post on the NYT's report that Bush signed an order allowing the NSA to spy on US citizens without a warrant, concluding that it "seems impossible for the president to avoid impeachment".

Sheil effectively shut down this thread by opening a separate thread within three hours of this comment from me:

If cs’s track record is any guide, the 28th Amendment will repeal the 22nd and Bush will be elected to a third term.

Sheil's second post was less dramatic:

As the wingnuts are edgy on this one, in trying to follow the story, I'm not predicting, or even salivating. Nor am I overlooking the killing and torturing and mangling of syntax under the Bush administration. In following the story, I'm, err, just following the story, wondering if this is a big or little trip, and what difference, if any, having a constitution with a bill of rights makes.

LP's blog-daddy, Mark Bahnisch, has now posted this:

It's clear now why the Bushies didn't go to the FISA Court for prospective or even retrospective validation of warrants. They weren't spying on known terrorists, they were potentially spying on everyone.

To which Sheil comments:

There seems no question he broke the law, and the defence is relying on implicit war overides, which will be subject to congressional adjudication in the hands of GOP majorities. Who knows where or where not the thing might go. The lockjaw discovery, the ’smoking gun’ if you will, it seems to me, is whether legal wiretaps have been applied for using evidence gained through illegal wiretaps - implicitly a confession of ‘rigging’ that would make the court, or the president, untenable, in theory at least.

It's a festival of wishful thinking with a bit of Sheil special spelling thrown in for comedy relief.

Editing note – corrected "within two hours" to "within three hours".