FISA and the Unreasonable Request

Just back from listening to the Sunday talking heads. There's not too much of note there, but one thing is becoming clearer and clearer. The reason that Bush decided to ignore the FISA law and authorize espionage on U.S. citizens without a warrant is because he feared the FISA Court would not grant permission. All the rest of the crap about having to do things on the spur of the moment and, therefore, needing the authority to bypass the Court is just that, crap. FISA even provides for the President to authorize a wiretap first and notify the Court later in emergency situations. Given that, there is no reason whatsoever why he needed to bypass FISA unless he feared the Court would not grant him the warrant if he sought it.

As Josh Marshall informs us, in the 27 years since FISA was passed, there have been 1727 applications for taps or other forms of espionage on Americans. Of those, 1724 were granted! Only 3 requests have been turned down (all, by the way, since Bush has been in office). So, it seems fair to conclude that this Court is highly likely to grant any reasonable request.

If that's true, it's also fair to conclude that the requests Bush feared the Court would deny were not reasonable! So just what kind of requests do you suppose those would be? I have my answer.