Let me try to make my point, now that the Democratic led Congress has seen the light and is agreeing with me.

- The US has the right to conduct wiretaps on international Foreign-to-Foreign calls/emails/communications for foreign intelligence purposes. Nobody rational denies this, we’ve been doing it from the era of Benjamin Franklin and the Committee of Secret Correspondence. Even Harry Stimsom who was famously quoted “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail” eventually became Secretary of War in WWII, and relied extensively on eavesdropping and decryption of foreign communications (Purple and ULTRA). And we are not the only nation that does this. Every country of any size has a “cabinet noirs” for the purpose of identifying threats against themselves and other nations, and they trade information on a daily basis on the various terrorists, splinter groups, nuts and wackos who may be plotting and planning death and destruction.

- In today’s modern telecommunications environment, an email/call between two people in the Middle East can go thru a US computerized switching station. In order for the US to conduct a wiretap, they need to be able to work with the telecom companies in order to make the necessary reprogramming and processes so that A) we can eavesdrop on the calls we need to and B) unauthorized eavesdropping is not allowed.

- The FISA courts prompted chaos when they recently decided that any Foreign-to-Foreign communications that happened to touch any US equipment required a warrant to be tapped. The NSA tracks millions of foreign calls/emails with keyword searches, out of which it extracts hundreds of “potential” hits, which it refines down to a dozen or so hits that might have some sort of validity every day. The FISA ruling (which President Bush promptly countered with an Executive Order, and then proceeded to quite rightly propose additional legislation to permanently fix the problem) was wrong. It would have forced the NSA to go thru the warrant process for every call/email it checked, regardless of origin or destination.

- When Bush requested assistance from the telecoms, it was given in good faith, with the assumption that they would not be sued for doing so. There are many precedents for this, from Good Sam laws and up. A quick analogy is if the police request to put an officer in your business to watch a neighboring criminal business, and that business sues you for violating their privacy, then you are protected. The Supreme Court agreed with Bush, the NY Times agreed with Bush (although in a sideways fashion), and many of the Democrats in Congress agree with Bush ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/washington/12cnd-fisa.html?_r=2&hp&ore... )

- You have the right to disagree. You have the right to complain about it. You have the right to go to Berkley, paint yourself purple, and stand on the corner with a badly written sign screaming (fill in most common left-wing insult here). That is one of the great things about this nation. But you are wrong. Every day, people go to work across this world to try to prevent another 9/11, on larger and smaller scales. At the same time, a much smaller group of people go to work, building bombs and making plans. I support that first group, working within a set of common sense guidelines and within the law. I know you do too, you just disagree with me on where the law draws a line.