The Spies Who Shagged Your Fourth Amendment

The Spies Who Shagged Your Fourth Amendment

Democrats had a chance to stop the Bush administration's domestic spying. Twice. In June they surrendered to a law that lets secret, warrantless spying continue, sidelining a special court's oversight role. They promised the measure would be temporary. But they're about to do it again, and let the blank check stand for six years, never once asking the question that disintegrates the administration's argument about needing that dictatorial authority: If the wiretapping of phone or internet communications targets only suspected al-Qaida operatives (as long as one of the parties is abroad, supposedly), and potentially millions of such communications are being targeted, is the administration suggesting that millions of Americans are having contact with suspected terrorists? In effect, yes. It's an absurd proposition. Don't expect Democrats to muster the capacity to shatter it.

We need a new "Crucible" — a morality play that, like Arthur Miller's classic of 1953 that linked Cold War McCarthyism to the Salem witch trials, updates the genealogy to include the hysterical age of Sept. 11.