October 9, 2007 6:49 AM

Hope on Wiretapping?

We often start the day with negative news -- and often that's the news that warrants attention and action -- and the current road to capitulation on granting the President expanded wiretapping powers would fit that model.

However, Glenn Greenwald (whose book was published by Working Assets last year), offers an analysis at Salon that suggests a touch of hope in this FISA fiasco:

Thus far, from everything I can tell, the picture is more complicated and less depressing than this NYT article suggests, and the defeat is not yet a fait accompli. To begin with, the bill to be proposed today by the House Democratic leadership actually contains some surprisingly good and important provisions.

That bill would compel the administration "to reveal to Congress the details of all electronic surveillance conducted without court orders since Sept. 11, 2001, including the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program." It would also require the maintenance of a data base to record the identities of all Americans whose conversations are surveilled. And it provides nothing at all in the way of amnesty or immunity for lawbreaking telecoms or administration officials. The bill introduced by House leadership is a bill the White House will never accept and would certainly veto, and it is vastly better -- in important ways -- than the atrocity they enacted in August.

Glenn's not known to be a sunshine-and-roses cheerleader, so if he sees reason to hope, we find some encouragement.

But it's not enough to hope -- if you haven't yet, you need to act now to stop this domestic spying abuse.