Year of bipartisan outrage on wiretaps bears little fruit

Something had damned well better be done about it!

The lame accusation that Democrats or Ameicans who voted for them this past election do not want Al Qaeda wiretapped is foolish in the extreme.

We just want to make sure that Al Qaeda and their bretheren are the only "enemy" who are being wiretapped and not other "enemies," like the Quakers, Raging Grannies for Peace and other dissenters and political opposition.

Year of bipartisan outrage on wiretaps bears little fruit:

WASHINGTON - When President Bush went on national television one Saturday morning last December to acknowledge the existence of a secret wiretapping program outside court supervision, the fallout was fierce.

Bush's opponents accused him of breaking the law, with a few even calling for his impeachment. His backers demanded that he be given express legal authority to do what he had done. Law professors talked, civil rights groups sued and a federal judge in Detroit declared the wiretapping program unconstitutional.

But as Democrats prepare to take over on Capitol Hill, not much has really changed in the last year: The National Security Agency's wiretapping program continues uninterrupted, with no definitive action by either Congress or the courts on what, if anything, to do about it, and little chance of a breakthrough in the lame-duck Congress.