Freudian Slip?

From Marquette University News Clips for March 20, 2006, one of the headlines, about a column dealing with President Bush’s program of wiretapping domestic phone calls to overseas numbers associated with terrorists reads:

NSA Surveillance is abuse

But in reality, the headline in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reads:

NSA surveillance isn’t abuse

Seems they got it backwards!

The column, from blogger Rick Esenberg (of Shark and Shepherd), is an excellent brief rundown on the law surrounding the issue, and a rebuke to Senator Russ Feingold, who has asked that Congress censure the president over this issue. Esenberg concludes:

Despite Feingold’s claim that we have been misled, we know that some in Congress have been informed of the details, and few, if any, are calling for the program’s suspension. There has been no serious attempt to pull its funding.

In other words, even those who want to criticize the president for the program don’t want him to stop.

Some on the left are ga-ga over how our “maverick” has “spoken truth to power.” While there is certainly room to debate the legality of the NSA program, attempts to, essentially, brand the president as a criminal constitute not debate but demagoguery.

The notion that Feingold is somehow anything other than a quite conventional politician trying to pander to the Bush-hating core of the Democratic Party is not just questionable.

It’s laughable.

[Update]

Esenberg treats the legal issues in greater depth on his blog.