I marvel at our ability to take something relatively simple and make it overly complicated, woefully inefficient and unpopular.

No reasonable person would disagree with doing whatever is necessary (within the law) to protect the nation. Wire tapping in itself makes sense. What I can't get my head around is how we managed to make this so convaluted.

The legal apparatus to obtain warrants has been in place at least 50 years. The process of obtaining warrants and keeping the information secret existed well before 9/11. If the surveillance is "time sensitive" it is possible to monitor a suspect and get the warrant later. The bottom line is that the warrants aren't hard to get and don't pose a real limitation.

So why change?

If the surveillance system is antiquated go to the federal courts and get it "tweaked". It wouldn't be hard in a post 9/11 world.

Even the term "domestic spy program" makes little sense. Words are important, what you name something frames the initial reaction. This isn't just an example of inefficiency, it's just bad politics.

I'm not against domestic surveillance...I'm against the lack of plain common sense we've used to implement the program. This really isn't that hard.

AAW:

No reasonable person would disagree with doing whatever is necessary (within the law) to protect the nation. Wire tapping in itself makes sense.

Sure, you make it sound very agreeable by calling it "whatever is necessary to protect the nation." The question is, what do those words mean?

Start with "necessary" - is wiretapping necessary? How do you know? Since the nation survived a century and a half without it, it might not be necessary. It might be only marginally helpful - should we do "whatever is marginally helpful?"

Moving on to "protect" - what exactly does that mean? Is it the same thing as "defend"? In other words, is it a response to a real threat, or might it be an action taken in anticipation of a potential threat, or even an imaginary threat? Maybe we should do whatever is marginally helpful to forestall imaginary threats.

Meanwhile, what exactly is "the nation"? Is it the people who live between the Atlantic & Pacific, north of Mexico and south of Canada? Or is it our overseas interests, our worldwide reputation, the national economy our ideals, our ability to act in the future - what exactly must we protect?

I'd say there is plenty of room for reasonable disagreement about the scope of action to be taken, the conditions under which to take it, and the goals behind the action.

I think you're overanalyzing...wire tapping is one of many tools that if used effectively (in combination) can protect (defend if you prefer) the United States of America, it's interests and allies.

I don't think the threat of terrorism is imaginary. I think the terrorists who struck us on 9/11 were real. I think the terrorists who have struck and repeatedly attempt to strike in Europe are real. We can go back and forth over how much of a threat the terrorist pose. We can even debate if fear mongering has taken place for political expediancy.

But I think any reasonable person, regardless of thier political persuasion, would agree that terrorism (from Islamic extremist) is a threat.

The issue is to what degree do we as citizens want to permit our government to encroach on civil liberties and the contstitution and the bill of rights to protect us from unknown terrorist threats? Notwitstanding that the permission in large part has been assumed, without our consent, by the Bush Administration, this is a slippery slope we are trodding.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 I heard so many people say they would be willing to relinquish some privacy and yes, liberty, if it would guard against future attacks. I was not one of them and am not now one of them. Look, the government just needs to be smart within existing laws, they can do the job. They don't need all these news laws, a la the atrociusMilitary Commissions Act of 2006 and the shameful piece of legislation passed just lask week. And what happened to Jose Padilla is something any rational American ought to be disgusted by.