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 News from Around the Americas | August 2007 
US Wiretap Bill Roils Liberal Base
 Elana Schor - The Hill
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| | US President George W. Bush pressed the House of Representatives Saturday to swiftly pass spying legislation to expand the government's ability to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists. (AFP) |
Amid liberal anger over the Democrats' eleventh-hour accession to the White House on expanded eavesdropping authority, civil liberties groups are pressing the majority to rectify the situation soon or face a political backlash.
The ire in the left-leaning blogosphere comes just days after Democratic presidential hopefuls courted the party's "Netroots" at the YearlyKos convention. Whether the Democrats' decision to allow a vote on broader wiretapping of suspected terrorists will significantly alienate their core supporters remains unclear, and may depend on whether the GOP-written fix to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is revised before its six-month sunset.
"We're going to push very hard for Congress to fix this in the fall. We're going to have high expectations for them to realize the damage they have inflicted," Caroline Fredrickson, Washington director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said. "For the Democratic leadership, the fact of the matter is, this isn't going to die."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has asked her Judiciary and Intelligence panel chairmen to produce a new FISA bill "as soon as possible," signaling a renewed battle over surveillance in September. But liberal pundits and activists already are showing Democrats the political consequences of giving ground to the Bush administration.
"In one fell swoop, [Democrats] have capitulated to a grossly unpopular president, justified his talking point that national security is on the line and given Republicans leverage," liberal radio host Cenk Uygur wrote on the Huffington Post blog, where Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) posted a like-minded lament.
"Frankly, you epitomize weak. Your every pore exudes feebleness. You are surrender monkeys," a blogger known as "Meteor Blades" wrote on the website Daily Kos, whose founder hosted last week's Netroots convention. In an ironic twist, House leaders canceled plans to address the gathering to complete work on the White House's FISA bill.
Matt Stoller, a Democratic campaign consultant and blogger, accused the ACLU of "immense and unforgivable incompetence" for failing to galvanize activists who could have derailed the FISA bill before the House sent it to President Bush in the wee hours of Sunday.
Fredrickson rebutted the critique but welcomed the frustration among bloggers: "Anger is a prelude to action," she said.
Several of the liberal commentators compared their sense of betrayal over the wiretapping bill to their letdown over the Iraq funding bill that Democrats passed in May without any checks on Bush. Their frustration was aimed both at the small minority of Democrats in both chambers who gave the White House its victory on wiretapping and at Democratic leaders for calling up the FISA bill.
One conservative-turned-libertarian, former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), said he already has written to Democratic leaders asking for quick revision of the White House FISA bill.
"It baffles me, why Congress allowed itself to be steamrolled," Barr said in an interview. "They basically just left the playing field for the administration to define ... that essentially sealed the fate of the Democrats in terms of the PR battle."
Virginia Sloan, president of the bipartisan Constitution Project, agreed that the outcry over FISA could be productive but warned that Democrats would have faced an uphill battle approving their own measure, given the likelihood of a GOP filibuster.
The 2008 election, she predicted, will "make the political situation even worse and make people even less courageous about responding to what are absolutely unwarranted charges that they're soft on terrorism."
All four Democratic senators in the White House hunt - as well as one Democrat facing reelection next year, Sen. Max Baucus (Mont.) - opposed the GOP-written wiretapping bill on Friday. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney used those votes as fodder on Tuesday against Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.), calling them "dangerously out of touch" on national security.
The FISA legislation, which became law Sunday, allows the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a court order on calls made by or to Americans, provided that the spying is "directed at" a foreign target. A FISA judge would weigh in only if he or she deems that the administration's promise to steer clear of targeting American citizens is "clearly erroneous."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), an Intelligence Committee member, on Tuesday released a letter from Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell that said the spy agency has no plans to cast an improperly wide net.
Illustrating the political potency of the FISA debate for Republicans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) office forwarded the DNI's letter to reporters without noting that Feinstein secured it.
"Democrats and Republicans agreed [that] going home without addressing this issue was not an option. Passing anything to address this problem - or any problem - required 60 votes," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who also opposed the FISA bill. "The clear option was the DNI proposal or nothing. We chose the DNI plan with as many modifications as we could get."
For their part, the ACLU, Constitution Project and the Center for Democracy and Technology called for replacing last week's bill with a long-term fix before it expires in February.
But one congressional aide familiar with the negotiations said that walking back the bill would be unrealistic, and that disappointed Democrats would have another bite at the apple in 2008.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), meanwhile, is proceeding with plans to take up a broad FISA bill in the fall.
"Sen. Rockefeller's goal all along has been a larger, comprehensive FISA modernization bill" that is expected in September, spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said. "This was intended to be a piece of that, the interim FISA fix." |
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