the NSA "scandal" (Draft)

The trouble with the many comments about using the NSA to spy on us is that they, almost universally, fail to note what it is that is scandalous about the story and in the confusion put all the blame on an activity which is legitimate. To unravel this start with the PURPOSE of the F.I.S.A. court. Without getting into minutia, the uncontroversial conclusion of the Church commitee was that power had been abused, that the executive branch had, in fact, lied about who it was wiretapping and why. The remedy was not to say that the executive could not wiretap but that it had to demonstrate to another branch of government, the judicial, (whose essential quality, in this debate, is that they don't work for the executive), that its desires were constitutional. The main point here is that the executive gets to wiretap!!!! The problem with the administration ignoring the F.I.S.A. court is that there is a vastly increased potential for abuse. Whenever anyone says that the problem is the wiretapping the rejoiunder is "we're looking for terrorists". Rhetorically the debate is now lost because the executive should be "looking for terrorists" and because the actual problem has been obscured, which is "how do we know who you're are wiretapping?". We used to have a perfectly American response to this conundrum which was the 'balance of powers' represented by the F.I.S.A. court. The administration's response is the unAmerican 'you've just have to trust us'.