Oh, Good, Jimmy Carter's Back

Jimmy Carter's a hypocrite. Color me surprised...

Former President Jimmy Carter, who publicly rebuked President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program this week during the funeral of Coretta Scott King and at a campaign event, used similar surveillance against suspected spies.

"Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision -- we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Mr. Carter said Monday in Nevada when his son Jack announced his Senate campaign.

...But in 1977, Mr. Carter and his attorney general, Griffin B. Bell, authorized warrantless electronic surveillance used in the conviction of two men for spying on behalf of Vietnam.

The men, Truong Dinh Hung and Ronald Louis Humphrey, challenged their espionage convictions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which unanimously ruled that the warrantless searches did not violate the men's rights.

In its opinion, the court said the executive branch has the "inherent authority" to wiretap enemies such as terror plotters and is excused from obtaining warrants when surveillance is "conducted 'primarily' for foreign intelligence reasons."

That description, some Republicans say, perfectly fits the Bush administration's program to monitor calls from terror-linked people to the U.S.

The Truong case, however, involved surveillance that began in 1977, before the enactment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which established a secret court for granting foreign intelligence warrants.

Democrats and some Republicans in Congress say FISA guidelines, approved in 1978 when Mr. Carter was president, are the only way the president may conduct surveillance on U.S. soil.

Administration officials say the president has constitutional authority to conduct surveillance without warrants in the name of national security. The only way Congress could legitimately curtail that authority, they argue, is through an amendment to the Constitution.

The administration's view has been shared by previous Democrat administrations, including Mr. Carter's.

(hat tip: Captain's Quarters) Again, this program requires some careful analysis. I think there's a good argument that it's Constitutional, and I think there's at least a colorable argument that it doesn't violate FISA. And I think those who wodner about the constitutionality of FISA have a point as well. In the end, if the program does violate FISA, then we probably need to amend FISA to aloow for more aggressive and useful electronic surveillance, because the law needs to adapt to technology. And it would be good to have Congress debate the issue with an eye toward passing a more modern and clear statute.

But that's not what we have. What we have instead is the usual talking points and substance-free debate. Which is the perfect place for Jimmy Carter. It's not like I care about the hypocricy. But the debate needs more intelligence and less idiocy.