Pick Your Poison

Americans have to choose their priorities, security or civil liberties. President Obama thinks we have struck the proper balance. I would disagree, as do most people at the moment, judging from the current brouhaha about the collection of domestic phone data.

As the NYT stresses in an editorial yesterday that calls for a drastic scaling back or outright elimination of the Patriot Act, any executive branch is going to push the limits, if not outright overreach the limits, of its authority. The particular outrage President Obama, a constitutional scholar, is committing is that he is continuing the Bush-Cheney policies, after campaigning against them. And, one might say, knowing better.

But on the other hand, is it any wonder this is the case? For example, I have no doubt that many of the same people who were hyper-critical of the FBI and the Justice Department for having let the elder of the Boston bombers slip through their fingers are now incensed at the collection of phone data. And they no doubt don't see any hypocrisy, or even irony in that. If we are going to react with partisan outrage to every breakdown in national security, then we can expect executives to continue using these tools, if only to cover their asses.

Just as Obama recently asked Congress to refine or totally take back the blank check it gave to the office of the President in the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, he should also ask for a re-examination or retraction of the Patriot Act.

Nobody who supported the Patriot Act or its partial re-authorization has much right to complain about how it is working out in practice.