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The Biden administration is reportedly worried a 2008 spy law permitting warrantless wiretaps will not be renewed by Congress, as lawmakers on both the left and right have expressed privacy concerns. With the law set to expire at the end of 2023, the administration “is so worried” about renewing the legislation that “it has begun the push to lobby for reauthorization 10 months before the law sunsets,” the Washington Post reported. “Its value cannot be overstated,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said Tuesday at the Brookings Institution. “Without 702, we will lose indispensable intelligence for our decision-makers and warfighters, as...

Finally, some good may come from the Valerie Plame kerfuffle -- if President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez have the stones to do what's right. A grave crime was exposed Dec. 16th when New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau published a story revealing President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to listen in on conversations between al Qaida suspects abroad and people in the United States without first obtaining a warrant. "We're seeing clearly now that (President) Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator," wrote Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. But the scandal was...

Last night John rendered his "Verdict: The New York Times blew the story." The "story" was the testimony of five federal judges -- Magistrate Judge Allan Kornblum and four former FISA court judges -- on Senator Specter's proposed revision of the FISA statute. According to yesterday's New York Times story by Eric Lichtblau: In a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges who served on the panel...voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president's constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order. They...

The Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks to the press has snared a high-profile conviction of an FBI linguist, who was sentenced to 20 months in prison Monday after pleading guilty to giving classified information to a blogger. The sentence for Shamai Leibowitz is likely to become the longest ever served by a government employee accused of passing national security secrets to a member of the media. His case represents only the third known conviction in U.S. history for a government official or contractor providing classified information to the press. And it reflects a surprising development: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department...

I cannot stand Keith Olbermann. He’s a self-righteous putz that spews sanctimonious liberal garbage. Well, until now. As Olbermann points out, during Obama’s campaign he constantly spouted he was against wiretaps. For example, on election day last year, Obama slammed President Bush’s warrantless wiretap program while speaking at Dartmouth College in his last public appearance before the polls closed in New Hampshire. “For one thing, under an Obama presidency, Americans will be able to leave behind the era of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and “wiretaps without warrants.”

ON WARRANTLESS SEARCHES AND WIRETAPS:THE ABYSMAL CONSTITUTIONAL RECORD OF BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON(and this report covers only term #1) I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. LEARNED HAND Since there are occasions when every vessel will break from her moorings, and since,...