Portion below; whole thing (via Antiwar.com) here:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9530
Compromise or capitulation?
Democratic leaders have worked hard to portray the legislation as a compromise, but close examination of its provisions suggests that it is an unvarnished victory for President Bush and his allies in Congress. The legislation eliminates meaningful judicial oversight of eavesdropping between Americans citizen and foreigners located overseas and effectively legalizes dragnet surveillance of domestic-to-foreign traffic. It stretches out the judicial review process so much that the government will in many cases be able to complete its surveillance activities before the courts finish deciding on its legality. And Democratic leaders have capitulated on the immunity question, agreeing to language that would almost certainly lead to retroactive immunity for lawbreaking telecom companies.
Many supporters of Barack Obama were dismayed last month when he announced that he would support the legislation. Indeed, more than 20,000 have joined a group on his campaign website urging him to reject the bill; the group is now the largest on his website. But thus far, Obama has maintained his support for the bill.
Last week, an Obama surrogate insisted that "with FISA expiring," the bill was the best Democrats could hope to get. The only problem is that FISA isn't expiring. It was enacted in 1978 and is not scheduled to sunset. The Protect America Act did expire in March, but given that the Bush administration managed to prevent terrorist attacks under FISA for almost six years until last summer's passage of the Protect America Act, it's hard to be too alarmed about living under FISA again for the final six months of Pres. Bush's term.
The Democrats' capitulation is particularly puzzling because, as we've pointed out before, the Democrats' firm stance on FISA this Spring turned out to be a political asset, not a liability. When House Democrats called Pres. Bush's bluff and allowed the Protect America Act to expire in March, it got a wave of positive coverage from the media, which pointed out that the PAA's expiration would have little effect on the government's ability to spy on terrorists. Now that Democratic leaders are switching sides yet again, we've seen the re-emergence of unflattering coverage focusing on the Democrats' weakness on national security issues and lack of party unity. Protecting civil liberties ought to be a matter of principle, but even if Democratic leaders are unmoved by civil liberties concerns, one might have expected them to stand up to the White House based on purely political motivations.
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