It comes down to: who do you and can you trust?

And if you can't trust outright, then what will create a "check and balance" as the best alternative to outright trust.

Commercial interests of all sorts have all sorts of information about us, their customers, that the government doesn't - and why should we trust them more?

I suppose we like to think that we could (eventually) discover any information abuse and seek remedy for it in the courts - legal or of public opinion.

The good news - literally - is that the purported abuses did come to light and are getting "tried" in the court of public opinion and the legislature - and there's a big election coming if you hadn't noticed.

I am willing to give my legislators the benefit of the doubt about this - that money from the telcos didn't come first and foremost in all of their decision making. That they saw the security benefit for our nation in re-balancing the Executive branch with new FISA provisions - and frankly trusting the good faith of the communications companies in these matters and a free press to help (eventually) keep everyone honest.

Your analysis is stupid! The president asked for their cooperation in a time of national crisis and they rightly gave it! Imagine the catastrophe that will be in the making on the next occasion when the telco's are asked to help in a time of crisis but refuse for fear of being sued.

One thing you fail to mention is that many of the nuisance suits that were filed were ruled to have no standing in as much as the plaintiffs cannot show that their communications were even intercepted: legally or illegally.

Dodd and the other liberal doofuses have fought for the right of foreign nationals captured as enemy combatants on a foreign battlefield fighting in a war that did not involve them as citizens of that country to have Constitutional Rights in the United states!

Last time I checked, the Constitution of the United States was written with regard to US citizens and their rights and, as such,were not extended to all of the citizens of all of the countries on the planet in all of the countries of the planet.

As far as Dodd and the other liberal lamebrains go, I wouldn't give two cents for their opinions on "protecting" the Constitution. No one, not even the President, is promoting the idea that American citizens should have their communications intercepted without cause and without sanction from the courts.

Dodd and others are trying to have it both ways. They want to criticize the President and satisfy the wishes of the majority of Americans that know we need FISA sooner rather than later and it must be structured in a way that is most conducive to willing cooperation by the telcos.

Even the majority of liberals in Congress (which by the way has a 9% overall positive rating) agreed that a communication surveillance law was desperately needed. After all, the majority of them approved the current law.

If you think our system is so flawed, maybe you'd like to offer up another country where the system of justice is better and more fairly applied. When you find it, you can just move there.

Bet you can't and bet you won't.

You are just a liberal crybaby (and Bush hater) that wouldn't dare move somewhere else where your criticism might be greeted with a severe rebuke from the government. Try Great Brittan on for size why don't cha.

Arry Williams wrote, "Last time I checked, the Constitution of the United States was written with regard to US citizens and their rights and, as such, were [sic] not extended to all . . . ."

You are incorrect. The Constitution defines the rights of the federal government, not its citizens. The Bill of Rights was aptly criticized by Hamilton for fostering exactly the misapprehensions you are exhibiting, hence the ninth and tenth amendments.

Williams continues with, "The president asked for their cooperation in a time of national crisis."

Unfortunately their cooperation was a felony. And it's Congress's job to make laws, not the president's.

W: "If you think our system is so flawed, maybe you'd like to offer up another [better] country [and] move there."

Illegal immigration is viewed rather dimly by most nations. You are correct that England is worse. But most of all, your idea is like that of moving into a neighbor's house when a pipe in your house develops a leak. Wouldn't it be better to live in your own house and just fix it? Or if you hire a plumber to fix the pipe and you catch him pawing through your wife's underwear, wouldn't it be better to MAKE HIM STOP rather than changing addresses? America belongs to its citizens, and the president is the citizens' employee. If he is screwing up badly, we should hold him to account. And if AT&T, Verizon, etc. are violating our laws, they should also be called to account. The "crisis" you mention was small potatoes compared to the massive damage caused by dragnet surveillance.

W: "No one, not even the President, is promoting the idea that American citizens should have their communications intercepted without cause and without sanction from the courts."

You are grievously wrong. As the NY Times and USA Today reported, they were intercepting communications without bothering to obtain even the rubber stamp FISC approval.

W: "You are just a liberal crybaby (and Bush hater) that wouldn't dare move somewhere else."

This is a spurious, ad hominem argument. I have lived outside the USA in two much more repressive, Soviet-style societies, and almost certainly I've been wiretapped and persecuted, and I was deported from one of them. But that has no bearing on whether the USA lives under the rule of law or not, or whether flagrant, felony violation of a federal statute should be condoned. I say no.