Et tu, Democracy?

With a heavy heart, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell told a Texas newspaper last week that due to the public debate over revising the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Americans will die.

This, according to Spencer Ackerman of TPM, McConnell: FISA Debate Will Kill Americans:

McConnell, who before the late July-early August FISA legislation enjoyed broad bipartisan respect, placed the predicted deaths of Americans at the doorstep of an open society. Thanks to widespread efforts to understand what the NSA's highly classified warrantless surveillance program is -- from journalists, from legal scholars, from national security experts, from elected officials -- the Bush administration was forced last month to reveal too much about how the program operates, in order to correct misunderstandings. And that means, McConnell said, "Americans are going to die."

See also, Chasing the Boogeyman.

I guess it's a variation on that old theme, "Give me Liberty or Give me Death."

Tags: Civil Liberties, Law, News