Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include -- without court approval -- certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans' business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.
[...]
The dispute illustrates how lawmakers, in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought.
[...]
"We did not cover ourselves in glory," said one Democratic aide …
(source)
The Congressional Democrats, in their haste to blow town, didn't carefully consider a bill? A really complex one, that the Bush Administration wanted? That further eroded the Constitution? And now they're having second thoughts?
Who could've predicted any of that?
And, from later in the same article:
At a tense meeting last week with lawyers from a range of private groups active in the wiretapping issue, senior Justice Department officials refused to commit the administration to adhering to the limits laid out in the new legislation and left open the possibility that the president could once again use what they have said in other instances is his constitutional authority to act outside the regulations set by Congress.
No way to see that one coming either, was there?
BTW, I added the Wall of Shame names to the first post I put up about this whole surveillance bill disgrace. Look for your senators and representative, if you don't already know how they voted.
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