Eds.

Recently, it seems that the editorial pages of various newspapers have picked up the ball of "journalistic inquiry" that has been dropped by their counterparts on the reporting side of the office.

This editorial in today's NYT, for example, addresses Sen. Roberts' efforts to avoid his Senate Intelligence Committee fulfilling its responsibilities. I especially agree with the closing argument:

[h]e and the White House were working out "a fix" for the law. That is the worst news. FISA was written to prevent the president from violating Americans' constitutional rights. It was amended after 9/11 to make it even easier for the administration to do legally what it is now doing.

FISA does not in any way prevent Mr. Bush from spying on Qaeda members or other terrorists. The last thing the nation needs is to amend the law to institutionalize the imperial powers Mr. Bush seized after 9/11.

To avoid hearings into the propriety and legality of the administration's activities is foolish and overtly political at the expense of responsible governance. To reward the possibly illegal activity of the administration by gutting the few provisions that scarcely act as a check or balance on unilateral executive power is unconscionable. I pray for Sen. Roberts and his colleagues; I pray that they never attempt to conjure the image of the Founding Fathers as supporting their positions crusades.

Lest you think that the "liberal media" was having all the fun, George Will's column provides a prescient perspective from the Right on our allegedly conservative president's date with executive power utopia.

In other op-eds, today's WaPo has this op-ed entitled, "In the Mideast, the Third Way Is a Myth" and this column by E. J. Dionne entitled, "No End to the Phony Populism."
- posted by C @ 5:15:00 PM