I have written in this space before about President Bush's illegal, warrantless, poorly-justified wiretapping program. Now, The New York Times editorializes about changes President Bush would like to make to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), which governs when, how, and why the U.S. government engages in electronic surveillance. According to the Times, Bush "has submitted a bill that would enact enormous, and enormously dangerous, changes to the 1978 law on eavesdropping." I was unable to find the bill in THOMAS, the Library of Congress' searchable legislation database, so it must be a very new bill, indeed.

But the search did turn up two other bills regarding FISA. One, authored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), would make good changes to FISA. I like Specter because he is, in Elizabeth's words, "an old-school conservative," meaning that he wants the government out of his business. Specter was livid when he learned about Bush's wiretapping program -- which is to say, when he read the newspaper in December, 2005, because Bush never informed Congress about the program. Specter was one of the program's biggest critics, and in his bill, S. 187, he makes it clear what he thinks about the president's bogus assertions that he has "inherent" constitutional powers to engage in warrantless wiretapping:

Nothing in this Act shall be deemed to amend those provisions of FISA concerning any wire or radio communication sent from outside the United States to a person inside the United States. The constitutionality of such interceptions shall be determined by the courts, including the President’s claim that his article II authority supersedes FISA.

Yeah! I have a love-hate relationship with Sen. Specter, since he will champion civil liberties, but he will also cut deals, as he did with the president over Samuel Alito (Specter agreed to pass Alito through the Senate Judiciary Committee in exchange for the promise that the same committee -- and not the Intelligence Committee -- would be allowed to hold hearings on the president's wiretapping program).

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) submitted a similiar bill, S. 1114. Hers does not contain as damning a sentence as Specter's, but it does limit the president's authority to be a jerk:

No provision of law shall be construed to implicitly repeal or modify this title or any provision thereof, nor shall any provision of law be deemed to repeal or modify this title in any manner unless such provision of law, if enacted after the date of the enactment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Improvement and Enhancement Act of 2007, expressly amends or otherwise specifically cites this title.

This eliminates the president's assertion that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force implicitly gave him the authority to use warrantless wiretapping in his War on Terr'. If this bill were to be signed (which is unlikely, as Cheney dislikes anything that places a check on the executive), anytime the president wanted to engage in wiretapping, he would have to go through the FISA process and wouldn't be able to cite any made-up authority that he thinks he has.