Revelations today of another secret National Security Agency program shows again the need for Congress and the courts to better supervise domestic spying to make sure it is justified and legal.
The new program, which began soon after Sept. 11, collects phone records of millions of ordinary Americans in a massive database that the NSA then analyzes for calling patterns that might reveal terrorism activity, USA Today reported.
If that’s true, the NSA’s monitoring of Americans is much more extensive than the warrantless surveillance program first reported last year. In defending that program, President Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international phone calls and e-mails to or from suspected terrorists. But as it turns out, if you call your next-door neighbor, a record of that call may end up in the NSA database.
Americans are all for fighting terrorism. But they need protections to make sure that the spying is justified and the government isn’t violating their civil liberties.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
President Bush, perhaps sensing the electorate’s waning approval of his presidency, this week recommended his brother Jeb, governor of Florida, for the job, saying he would make a “great president.”
Jeb for prez? Is the third time the charm? Dad thinks so, too: George Herbert Walker Bush thinks Jeb would be “awfully good” in the Oval Office.
But American voters should fiercely resist family dynasties in our national leadership. They smack of privilege and power used to one family’s advantage, not the nation’s.
For the same reason, I don’t want to see a Hillary Clinton candidacy or presidency, despite her considerable political gifts.
Besides, is the nation so bereft of leadership prospects that we have to hand off the presidency every few years to either a Bush or a Clinton?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The New York Times put its latest poll results into a graphic that is worth seeing (click here). It shows the dramatic decline in approval for President Bush on several key issues. The public also thinks Democrats would do better than Republicans on all but two issues surveyed — several of them by huge margins. But will the discontent with Bush and the GOP translate into a Democratic takeover of Congress in November, given the number of Republican incumbents in safe districts and the Democrats’ history of blowing elections?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
There is one neglected area of foreign policy in which President Bush “is making a historic contribution: he is devoting much more money and attention to human trafficking than his predecessors,” wrote New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof this week. Fighting sex trafficking and other slavery is a cause also rightly championed by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., Kristof noted, and an office in Bush’s State Department is making a real difference by bullying governments into prosecuting traffickers, arresting pimps, closing brothels and, in the process, saving prostitutes from AIDS. He wrote: “On that crucial issue, Mr. Bush is leaving a legacy that he and America can be proud of.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Longtime union organizer and Democratic activist Pat Lehman told The Eagle editorial board that she is “furious” about Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Bill Gale’s recently announced plan to dramatically reduce the number of polling places in Wichita.
Lehman, who works around the nation and the world (including a recent visit to Indonesia) to organize voters and improve election access, called the new plan “the most insidious attempt to discourage voter turnout I’ve ever seen in this state” and a “clear violation of the Voting Rights Act.” She promised a battle.
Looks like this debate is only going to get hotter. Gale needs to address questions about how these decisions were made and how these changes enhance voter turnout. If longer lines and fewer machines discourage voting, how is that an improvement in democracy?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Statehouse insider Martin Hawver raised a statistical concern about the Taxpayer Bill of Rights proposal that failed in the Legislature this session. He noted in a commentary in Wednesday’s Eagle that “TABOR lite” would have required two-thirds majority votes in both chambers in order to raise taxes. That would mean, Hawver calculated, that as few as 14 state senators (just more than a third of the 40-member Senate) could determine the state’s tax policy. “That’s a lot of power to hand over to less than 9 percent of the 165-member Legislature,” he wrote. Of course, even with the current simple majority requirement, it only takes 20 senators — or just 12 percent of all lawmakers — to block a tax increase.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
