Democrats' terrorist privacy fetish resurfaces

NY Times:

A Congressional oversight panel plans to ask the National Security Agency to start an investigation into new evidence that the agency illegally wiretapped a Muslim scholar in Northern Virginia and concealed the eavesdropping during a 2005 trial in which the scholar was convicted on terrorism charges.

Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat and chairman of the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, said in an interview that he planned to ask the inspector general of the N.S.A. to open what would be the first formal investigation by the agency into whether its eavesdropping program had improperly interfered with an American’s right to a fair trial.

Mr. Holt said he was responding to new evidence presented to him and other Congressional leaders by the Muslim scholar’s lawyer indicating that the Bush administration tried to hide the full extent of the government’s illegal spying in the criminal case.

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Holt seems to be starting with the false premise that intercepting enemy communications in a time of war is illegal when they are communicating with someone in America. That is idiocy on stilts. Those are the calls we should want intercepted. If this guy was talking to and aiding and abetting the LET we should be intercepting those calls and the NSA should not have to jump through hoops to do it.

No court has sustained the position taken by the NY Times and the Democrats on this issue. In fact the cases have gone the other way. That is because the idea behind their complaint is so ridiculous and it ignores the inherent powers of the executive to gather information with respect to national security that was never intended to be covered by FISA and if that was its intent it would be unconstitutional.

It is too bad the Democrats did not try this before the election, because they would have been hammered on it.