FISA

I sat down to write something about the current FISA law situation after completing my praise for Chris Dodd, and I had a moment of cognitive dissonance.

It suddenly occurred to me that not only had we come to the point in this country where some were actually seriously arguing against maintaining the judicial oversight of the behavior of our elected officials, but that we'd actually reached a moment where the civil libertarian argument is de facto arguing in favor of a secret court, a court whose workings and composition are hidden and whose rulings are secret, and thus not really subject to appeal.

In my childhood, secret courts were among the bogeymen we were warned about with regard to the Soviet Union. They were The Enemy, because they didn't believe in Freedom. People visiting the Soviet Union, we were told, had a tendency to disappear if they were in any way negative towards the Kremlin, shipped off to secret prisons in Siberia by secret courts accountable to no one except the politburo.

And here I am looking at our country and making the extreme moral compromise of arguing in favor of a secret court here, because our leaders want us to believe that even that court is too much of a hindrance on them.

Sigh. My country. I'm so proud.

Liam.