Glen Greenwald is going to be publishing a book called How Would a Patriot Act? which should be required reading for any true conservative. Who woulda thunk a Republican president would be so cavalier about compliance with a straightforward statute? I thought "law and order" was a Republican value.
If FISA didn't seem to allow the level of wiretapping the administration felt it needed, why not ask Congress to amend it? There is almost no chance the administration would have been denied whatever they requested to stop terrorism.
I thought this was a nation of laws, not men. The President and his men had three choices....
A) obey the FISA law and, if they thought it necessary, work to have the law amended
B) disobey the law and work to have the law amended
C) disobey the law and pretend that it simply didn't apply to them
They chose option C. Regardless of their motives, what they did was (and continues to be) a clear violation of the FISA act unless someone can show me a law that overrides Section 1811.
This is an extremely dangerous path because..
If any administration is allowed to pick and choose which laws it is obliged to obey, Congress might as well go out of business.
It is useless to pass "laws" if such "laws" can be ignored without any consequences.
It's long past time to stop making apologies for this behavior. This administration is setting precedents for future administrations - like it or not.
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