by TChris

In the few remaining legislative days before the November election, the president would like nothing more than the enactment of a law authorizing his continued wiretapping of Americans without being bothered to get a warrant (unless it would be a law authorizing him to use sham tribunals to justify the continued indefinite detention of individuals at Guantanamo).

Topping the to-do list is passing legislation officially sanctioning the National Security Agency's secret wiretapping of suspected terrorist communications. The eavesdropping has been carried out without warrants since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A federal judge in Detroit recently ruled the program illegal. ...

The Senate Judiciary Committee will consider as many as four contradictory bills on the issue tomorrow and could approve all of them.

The Specter-Cheney proposal is probably the worst of the bills, but none are necessary. Republican legislators (as well as Democrats who are willing to sell out freedom for fear that they will otherwise appear "soft on security") need to know that we value our right to be free from warrantless invasions of our private communications. They'll know that when they hear from you. Some Republicans are already getting the message, but many of those still advocate changing FISA, even if the changes are less sweeping than those proposed by Sen. Specter. The message they need to hear is: There's no need to fix what ain't broke.