Privacy: A right to defend - The Boston Globe
Father Drinan remains the only Catholic priest elected to Congress. The Pope made him choose between the priesthood and politics. He was a professor at Georgetown Law Center while I was a student, and apparently still is. Go Father Drinan :-)
Privacy: A right to defend - The Boston Globe:
SOMETIMES, AS IN the case of the current domestic surveillance controversy, it's important to take the long view.
It was in 1978 that President Carter persuaded Congress to create a special secret court that would authorize wiretaps or secret surveillance on people suspected of espionage. I was one of the few members of Congress to vote against the measure.
Although little is known about the court that monitors the resulting Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, analysts generally assume that it has achieved its objectives while complying with the Fourth Amendment's requirement that a warrant be issued by a judge before every search and seizure.
After the 9/11 attacks on America in 2001, however, President Bush decided to finesse FISA and collect information from countless people suspected by the spy agencies of being involved in terrorist activities. Three years after this clandestine program was started, the press revealed its existence. Late last week, a federal judge in Detroit, Anna Diggs Taylor, said that the president's move to bypass FISA was unconstitutional. Still, the president remains adamant that the plan is essential and that it is justified by his broad inherent powers as commander in chief.