We've been told that FISA limits the President's power to perform warrantless wiretaps. This is false -- Congress cannot remove a constitutionally-granted power from the executive branch by passing mere laws. It must amend the Constitution. Thus courts have always ruled in this manner:

The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. It was incumbent upon the court, therefore, to determine the boundaries of that constitutional authority in the case before it. We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power. [FISA Court, Sealed Case No. 02-001, 2002]

(This is not unique or new to the Bush administration, I might add. But somehow the media never noticed the massive Echelon program under Clinton, which did domestic surveillance! Thus, one suspects the outrage of being, shall we say, a tad contrived.)

The second thing we're told is that the Bush administration is lawless and does whatever it wants. Yet in response to protests, Bush did what Bush has always done: complied. They put the program under the FISA court. And, as one might expect, foreign surveillance choked.

From today's New York Times:

Mr. McConnell, lead negotiator for the administration in lobbying for the bill, said in an interview that the court’s restrictions had made his job much more difficult.

“It was crazy, because I’m sitting here signing out warrants on known Al Qaeda operatives that are killing Americans, doing foreign communications,” he said. “And the only reason I’m signing that warrant is because it touches the U.S. communications infrastructure.”

How beautiful: we actually made it safer for al Qaeda to use US infrastructure for its communications regarding how to attack us. Ya just gotta love it the irony. And thanks to a recent court ruling even purely foreign-to-foreign communications, if they merely touched US infrastructure, were granted the same protection US citizen have. Brilliant.

Democrats, as we know, had sworn all that warrantless wiretapping of foreign communications was a horrible violation of our civil liberties. Yet what happened when the report came that we actually weren't doing that anymore?

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — At a closed-door briefing in mid-July, senior intelligence officials startled lawmakers with some troubling news. American eavesdroppers were collecting just 25 percent of the foreign-based communications they had been receiving a few months earlier.

Congress needed to act quickly, intelligence officials said, to repair a dangerous situation.

Some lawmakers were alarmed. Others, jaded by past intelligence warnings, were skeptical.

The report helped set off a furious legislative rush last week that, improbably, broadened the administration’s authority to wiretap terrorism suspects without court oversight.

Right. That was all political posturing on their part: Bush was abusing his powers by doing warrantless wiretapping. There was no real threat. It was all fear-mongering!

But it seems Democratic "senior intelligence officials" didn't really believe that after all, and reversed course once they noticed the numbers were down. Sounds like a vindication of Bush's claim that warrantless foreign wiretaps were important to our intelligence efforts -- even Democrats really agree, when the rubber hits the road. (I wish they could have done so without the political chicanery, but at least they did the right thing when it mattered. Good for them: all hope is not lost.)

There are still a few True Believers, of course. Russ Feingold claims it's all a trick.

“There was an intentional manipulation of the facts to get this legislation through,” said Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a Democrat on the Intelligence Committee who voted against the plan.

The White House, Mr. Feingold said Friday in an interview, “has identified the one major remaining weakness in the Democratic Party, and that’s its unwillingness to stand up to the administration when it’s making a power grab regarding terrorism and national security.”

“They have figured out that all they have to do is start talking about an imminent terrorist threat, back it up against a Congressional recess, and they know the Democrats will cave,” he added.

I'd love to see the evidence of dishonesty, Mr. Feingold. If you have it, you have a patriotic duty to show it to us all and expose this administration for the liars they are. Otherwise, you're either a coward or you're simply making things up.

(Strangely, I'm not holding my breath on that first option.)

Of course it's more efficient to allow computers to automatically target and intercept foreign calls between known suspects than it is to put a human being into the process each time. If that wasn't true, and computers were slower than people, then I'm in the wrong profession. But Feingold wants me to believe otherwise.

(Or perhaps "manipulation of the facts" is just a lawyerly way of admitting they presented, well, the facts -- in a way Mr. Feingold didn't prefer? If so then it would seem the "manipulation" was being done by Mr. Feingold.)

And Mr. Feingold apparently wants me to believe there is no actual, serious threat from terrorism. (So was Bush behind the doctors' plot in the UK too?) Bush just wants to ... uh, I dunno ... randomly listen in on unrelated calls because it's so much more fun than TV soap operas, I guess. Maybe he'll catch someone talking about voting for Democrats and toss 'em into jail?

It's an odd world the left lives in. I agree we see reality totally differently, but, try as I might, I can't get any part of that narrative to jive with the facts, as best I can access them -- much less my common-sense understanding of things.

If someone can help me see the light here, I'd most welcome it. Or do even random Democrats think this is a tad silly? (There'd be nothing wrong with that: I'm totally opposed to a number of common Republican stances, such as overspending and amnesty.)

Inquiring minds want to know.