With warrants or without: the real FISA debate

There is a debate currently going on in Congress. The debate is about whether the administration should be able to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists by obtaining a warrant from the FISA court (which is very fast and even has provisions for "retroactive" warrants), or whether the administration should be able to eavesdrop on anyone at all whenever it wants and not need a warrant to do so. Democrats and a majority of Americans support the former position. Republicans support the latter position, in the form of a bill authored by Arlen Specter (R).

But Republicans are lying. They are presenting the debate as if Democrats don't want the administration to be able to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists, while Republicans do. This is a lie, but it's getting repeated quite a bit in media reports about the debate. Nobody supports a law that prevents the administration from eavesdropping on terrorists. That is a ridiculous straw-man argument put forth by Republicans in a lame attempt to make Democrats appear weak on security in advance of the upcoming midterms. Don't fall for it, don't let your friends fall for it, and don't let the websites and media sources you consume fall for it.

All of this is my re-wording of this Glen Greenwald post on the issue. Maybe I should just grab his Atom feed and syndicate him on Internal Monologue because he's so right-on about so many things. Here's his summary of the issue (emphasis his):

The difference between FISA and the warrantless eavesdropping program is not about whether the President can eavesdrop on terrorists. He can eavesdrop on all of the terrorists he wants under FISA as it is written. What is being debated -- the only difference -- is whether he should be able to eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans with judicial oversight (as all Presidents have done for the last 30 years) or whether he can eavesdrop on Americans in secret, without oversight (which led to severe abuses of the eavesdropping powers in the four decades prior to FISA). That is what is being decided, not whether he can eavesdrop on terrorists.

UPDATE: Atrios picks this up:

As Greenwald notes it's rather depressing that many in the media have taken an incredibly simple issue - the Bush administration is breaking the law by unnecessarily wiretapping American citizens without warrants as is clearly required by statute - and entirely adopted the Bush/Republican factually incorrect spin.

The Bush rules of journalism.