How to Defund Warrantless Wiretapping

Over at OpenLeft, I have posted my bi-weekly Strategery article. This week, it's about an alternative strategy to stop the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping. Such a strategy is necessary because congressional Democrats last week capitulated to the White House and passed legislation allowing this kind of behavior to continue.

Let's be clear -- we all want law enforcement authorities to be able to hunt down terrorists. And we know for a fact that the special FISA courts already have extraordinary tools to process warrant requests (there is even a process to approve them retroactively so as to prevent federal agents from losing precious time in the hunt for terrorists). We know, in other words, that Congress following a strategy like the one I describe would merely force the Bush administration to follow a law that does nothing to hurt our national security, and everything to protect our freedoms. Put another way, this isn't a debate about national security, because there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that obtaining warrants hurts national security. This is a debate about privacy and the rule of law.

Go check out Strategery here.