Balanced News Blog

This is what CNN’s opening paragraph was:

In acknowledging the message was true, President Bush took aim at the messenger Saturday, saying that a newspaper jeopardized national security by revealing that he authorized wiretaps on U.S. citizens after September 11.

Now, “spying” on one’s own citizens is nothing new. Nearly everyone does it. Oh please, don’t snort, you know it’s true. The Brits have been doing it for years via MI5 (no, not James Bond, that’s MI6); the French have the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), since 1944; the Germans have Verfassungsschutz; the Chinese have the Ministry of Public Security. The list is endless, nearly every country in the world has some sort of internal mechanism for monitoring organizations and individuals within the state.

So let’s talk about it another way. The President has re-authorized the order some 30 times, monitoring on US citizens, that’s what the big news is all about. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin says that the President did not have to do so secretly, as a mechanism already exists for him to do so – the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The Colossus blog puts things into perspective, and I feel that I agree 100% with what they wrote …

Grandma’s email may have been read. Big deal. But the fact that we kept Grandma’s email from the prying eyes of the government will be a small comfort indeed if New York or Washington gets vaporized by terrorists inside the U.S.

… people tend to forget that we have caught US citizens who were working for al-Qaeda.

On the other hand, Here’s A Thought is angry that the NY Times sat on this report for a year before revealing it. They argue that their (NY Times’) job is to report to the masses, not to worry about who leaked what.

Some are suggesting though, that the President broke the law and demand an inquiry:

“Whether it was legal is a matter that ought to be examined,” Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNN television.

Sue’s Place (Southern Rants) also seems to believe that President Bush has broken the law, and provides some references to articles that provide editorial proof of such.

The Cool Blue Blog feels that the President is doing the right thing, and something he said made me want to include him in this article …

Seems prudent to me given that the President is charged with protecting the American people and all. And in the aftermath of these attacks, who precisely would US citizens be calling in Afghanistan, hmmmm? Few if any outside the Taliban and al Qaida had access to phones. I know I didn’t call anyone in Afghanistan, did you?

… and he has a good point. Any normal communications to military personnel would be over military communications systems anyway, not the normal phone system.

In The Bullpen thinks that the President hasn’t doing anything wrong either, and has an interesting titbit of information at the end of their article, that in a survey people trust Republicans more than Democrats on national security.

I think in the end it comes down to a matter of the President’s duty to protect the country. What would the nation say if, for example, a nuclear weapon were to be exploded in LA? They’d blame him. They’d say, “you didn’t do enough”. But, until that point, until something disastrous like 9/11 happens again, the voice of the left and liberals will always criticize him and say that he is acting like a King in all but name.

Cross-posted at The English Guy.