You Are a Liar, Mr. President

Once again, divine intervention intercedes to prevent the White House from getting its way on the FISA legislation. After the expected craven cave in by the Senate earlier this week, The Senate offers amnesty to the telecom companies, the House actually called Bush's bluff by refusing to acquiesce to his demands to expand warrantless wiretapping and provide immunity to the telecom industry. FISA Fight: This round to the Dems. For my recent discussion on the issues involved in this issue, see Free Pass?.

Predictably, President Bush is claiming that that the sky is falling, House Leaves Surveillance Law to Expire, which is just more of the same from our Liar-in-Chief. To the contrary, as Glenn Greenwald explains in FISA 101:

FISA and the Protect America Act both equally allow eavesdropping on the Terrorists Who Want to Kill Us. The material difference is that FISA requires warrants for eavesdropping on Americans (after the fact, if necessary) while the Protect America Act allows the President to eavesdrop on any Americans without having any oversight at all. The difference does not relate to the ability to eavesdrop on the Terrorists but on the nature and level of oversight from that eavsdropping. Moreover, the FISA Court is and always has been a rubber-stamping tribunal that does not ever block any surveillance on any suspected Terrorists.

Keith Olbermann also provided a scathing Special Comment, chastising Bush for callously playing the fear card:

(Transcript available at Crooks and Liars)

Steve Benen of Crooks & Liars puts the issues in perspective, in The FISA question the right can’t answer:

National Review’s Andy McCarthy:

“Well it looks like the unconscionable is about to occur. I am hearing from several sources that the House is planning to recess on Friday without taking up the Senate bill. That would mean the lapse of our surveillance authority at midnight…. President Bush has to keep pounding this, as does Sen. McCain. This is not politics, folks. For grown-ups, this is life and death.”

If the powers extended through the PPA were genuinely a matter of “life and death,” and the bill’s expiration were “unconscionable,” they why not drop telecom immunity?

Look, if it’s that important, there’s a simple answer: pass the bill without telecom immunity. Then come back and introduce immunity in a separate bill. If you’ve got the votes for it, fine. If not, too bad. I’m against immunity myself — though hardly hellbent on the subject — but whichever way the vote went, in the meantime we’d have the FISA extension and surveillance could continue normally.

But that’s not on the table. The supposed grownups in the GOP are, apparently, perfectly happy to play around with “life and death” if it’s in the service of a bit of demagogic brinksmanship over telecom immunity.

See also, Treating the Constitution as a Doormat.

(Video via OneGoodMove, The Fear Card)