A warm, moist wind.

Jason Lewis, the periodic flashback from the bad acid trip, the rash that won’t clear up, the flatulence that won’t go away, the gift membership in the Chia Pet Club, the gift to the Twin Cities that just keeps on giving, penned another stinker in the Star Tribune yesterday. Most of the column is hysteria about being at war – the Congress authorized the use of force; it didn’t actually declare war, by the way – and the need to KEEP OURSELVES SAFE! Just like Katie, Jason wants to ram 9/11 up our arses as often as necessary to keep us all afraid and nice and compliant with whatever authoritarian schemes the righties might advance.

NSA hoovering up private information on all of us? Not to worry; it’s keeping us safe! You’ll have to pardon him, but this does not make Spotty feel safer. It just makes him feel spied on.

There have been other commenters on Lewis’ column; Smartie at Power Liberal, for instance. There is one teensy thing that Spot wants to mention, however. Lewis says:

When Zacarias Moussaoui was busy learning how to steer an airliner inside a simulator at an Eagan flight school, the FBI got the now-infamous tip as to how suspicious it seemed that a self-sufficient fellow with no gainful employment was only interested in flying a plane, not landing it. Alas, because evidence (courtesy of French intelligence) [The French? Oh, the irony. Ed.] of mere membership in a suspect organization was not enough to authorize a warrant to inspect his computer files, information on what might have prevented 9/11 was not shared.

Outrageous! Damn that FISA Court! Only one small problem. The Justice Department never presented a warrant application for Moussaoui’s computer to the FISA Court. Why not? You might ask John Ashcroft about that one. Spotty thinks that maybe it is because different agencies of the government did not understand the impending threat of the hijack of civilian airplanes. Why not? Well among other reasons, Chimpy McFlightsuit was too busy riding bike and clearing brush to “shake the bureaucratic tree” as the Clinton Administration had done in the run-up to January 1, 2000.

It is the height of intellectual dishonesty to assert that FISA doesn’t work because it wasn’t used. It’s also stupid. And it surely isn't a reason to permit the further erosion of our Fourth Amendment rights.

Tags: FISA Court