The Absurd Report

On Tuesday, we got a double-winner. First, the Senate voted to approve an overhaul of intelligence law which, though flawed, provides authority for American intelligence agencies to continue monitoring the savages trying to kill us. Second, we got inescapable confirmation that Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the two contenders to be the Democrats’ nominee, are not fit to be president of the United States.

Understand: this was the most important vote on national security in years.

In 2007, a ruling of the court created by the ill-conceived 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) required the intelligence community to seek court permission before monitoring terrorists operating outside our country — that is, outside the jurisdiction of United States courts.

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Democrats, of course, have fought every sensible national-security improvement since 9/11. Yet, so preposterous was the notion that the NSA should need a warrant from a judge in Washington in order to listen as, say, a terrorist in Pakistan gives directions to a terrorist in Afghanistan that even Democrats relented — or at least enough of them to enact last August’s “Protect Act.” This stopgap measure (the Left would not agree to more than six months of common sense) enabled our spies to continue spying outside the U.S. without court interference, just as FISA intended.

Nevertheless, conspicuously absent from the lopsided 60-28 majority were Senators Clinton and Obama. So deep were they in the thrall of the anti-war, anti-security Left that they dared not vote in favor of preserving the intelligence-gathering powers necessary to protect — even for just six months — the nation they are vying to lead.

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Tags: National Security

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