Read Kevin Drum (here and here) on what we found out yesterday about the NSA wiretap story. Matt Yglesias has some additional thoughts along similar lines.
The key point is that we know that this wasn’t some novel technology but garden-variety wiretapping. And with that being the case, it’s just not clear why the administration didn’t get Congress to revise the FISA law to make these searches legal.
To me the whole thing remains a mystery. One school of thought would suggest that there must have been something shady going on, otherwise they would have just gotten the law changed and avoided any legal questions. As Kevin says, it’s not like it would have been that hard to get such an expansion through Congress in 2002 or 2003 or even today for that matter.
There’s another possible explanation, though — one that squares with my sense of this group in the White House. And that is that they have an ideological affinity — perhaps even a compulsion — for presidential assertions of extra-constitutional authority. Just on principle.
That is their mindset. It informs countless actions over the last five years. Still, it’s not enough. Kevin’s right. Something doesn’t fit. There must be something else.
