On the Fifth Day of Christmas...

On the fifth day of Christmas,
the Bluenecks [said] to me
Stop spying now!...

Better education
An anti-torture law
A budget with a heart
And a rebuilt New Orleans

The news yesterday was un-be-freakin'-leavable. The New York times revealed, and inside sources at the National Security Agency have confirmed, that in 2002 President Bush ordered the super-secret NSA to spy on thousands of American citizens without warrants to do so, bypassing well-established laws meant to protect Americans' civil liberties. The NSA has been spying on us for a very long time, and with great efficiency. However, the 1978 Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) created a mechanism whereby NSA officials could get warrants from a top-secret FISA court. As James Bamford, author of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency explained on NPR yesterday, FISA even allows for emergency situations when the NSA can seek their warrant after wire-tapping has already begun. According to Bamford, insiders report that the court has rejected the request for a warrant perhaps only once out of thousands of cases.

Yet, the Bush White House ignored this well-established and highly-effective system of checks and balances. As Jeffery Smith, former general counsel to the CIA, said yesterday, in effect until the Supreme Court tells a president to stop, he can do just about anything he wants in the name of national security.

The backlash yesterday was instantaneous and gratifying. The Senate failed to overcome a threatened filibuster to halt the renewal of portions of the so-called "Patriot Act," another example of restricted privacy and civil liberties in the name of security. Bluenecks tip their hats to Sen. Russ Feingold for leading this charge, and to Republicans like Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire, for standing with him. Even Sen. Arlen Specter, the Republican sponsor the Patriot Act renewal, expressed his dismay over the NSA spying story. "There is no doubt this is inappropriate," Specter said. "I want to know precisely what they did...How NSA utilized their tecnical equipment, whose conversations they overhead, how many conversations they overheard, what they did with the material, what purported justification there was."

What Bluenecks can do: E-mail Sen. Specter and tell him you appreciate his outrage over this trampling of our civil liberties. Encourage Sen. Specter to follow through with his statements yesterday to launch an investigation of the President's decision and to determine whether his actions were legal.