In a "Beat the Press" segment on MSNBC, Dan Abrams pinpoints exactly why the FISA debate is so distorted and misunderstood. [media id=2216] [media i
August 24, 2007

msnbc-fox-fisa.jpg In a "Beat the Press" segment on MSNBC, Dan Abrams pinpoints exactly why the FISA debate is so distorted and misunderstood.

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HUME: The Senate Judiciary Committee's latest deadline for the WH to comply with it's subpoena for documents relating to warrantless...allegedly warrantless...wiretaps has come and gone...

ABRAMS: Allegedly! Allegedly! President Bush admitted to authorizing warrantless wiretaps back in 2005.

This ties in perfectly with an article Glenn just wrote about FISA and DNI chief Mike McConnell's demand for retroactive immunity for the private sector companies who assisted in the illegal surveillance:

So much of this is due to the profound failure of the media and our various "experts" simply to state the basic facts here -- that it is a felony to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants and yet that is what the Bush administration did. Instead, we have self-proclaimed "experts" like the Brookings Institutions' Benjamin Wittes trying to show how smart and thoughtful and knowledgeable he is (and explicitly describing himself this way) by writing in The New Republic claiming that these matters are far too complicated for even the most thoughtful experts (like him) to understand, let alone the hordes of simpletons acting as though they know Bush did anything wrong here by breaking the law. Read more...

With no help from the national press, the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal is as clear-cut as can be: The 1978 FISA law makes it a felony to engage in surveillance of Americans without a warrant.The administration's laughable legal "defense" notwithstanding, the President has been ordering the NSA to commit felonies for over five years...and has recently successfully pressured the feckless Democrats into legalizing it. As Glenn says: "It is not hyperbole to say that government lawbreaking has become formally legitimized."

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