How Is Spy Program Story ‘Playing in Peoria’?
Here’s the Answer Editor & Publisher By E&P Staff
NEW YORK In recent days, E&P has monitored the overwhelmingly critical response, at major metro editorial pages, to current revelations about the Bush administration’s domestic spying program. Even conservatives such as George Will have raised issues about it, but he’s another inside-the-Beltway guy. How is the story “playing in Peoria”?
We mean, literally.
It turns out, not all that differently. Here is a lengthy excerpt from the Tuesday editorial in the Peoria (Ill.) Journal Star.
An unrepentant, even defiant President Bush has admitted to authorizing the National Security Agency to conduct secret electronic eavesdropping on more than 30 occasions involving thousands of citizens, bypassing the court established by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to deal with such circumstances. He defended those actions, proclaiming that the procedure has only been used against those with “a clear link” to al-Qaida. Bush said the Constitution and Congress, when it green-lighted his request to wage war, give him such latitude, which he will continue to exercise. Americans who appreciate what this nation stands for should respectfully disagree with the president’s generous and arguably self-serving interpretation of the Constitution, which does not give any occupant of the Oval Office absolute, unilateral power, even in wartime. Second, to suggest that this is “a vital tool in our war against the terrorists” is stretching reality.